Finished the kitty paw poncho!
It's a bit late in the evening and I'm tired, but you can't post photos of knitwear without showing it on a person, so have a selfie!
Man, I was really worried with this one. I only had three balls of yarn for it, one of the variegated and two of the denim, and I got these ages ago so yeah, not gonna be able to match the dye lots. I was holding my breath there towards the end, I gotta say. Second-guessing whether I had enough yarn to do the second repeat of the bottom edging, whether I would have enough for a bind-off...
And naturally, when I bound off and tried it on, it WASN'T BIG ENOUGH. Too short, too narrow through the blue part, neckline all huge and wonky...
So I dumped it in the tub for a soak and prayed to the gods of wool that the magic of blocking would salvage it. If it wouldn't, I planned to find a smaller person to gift it too.
Thankfully, blocking turned out to be a really good idea and the poncho grew probably a size or so as a result, as well as looking a lot tidier once the stitches settled into place.
Always block your wool, kiddos.
The neckline was still a problem, but I did have a bit of yarn left over. Six strands and a half hour of muttering darkly under my breath later, and I had a nice braided drawstring that I wove through the base of the ribbed neckline. This turned out to be another really good idea because as a result the neckline was no longer sliding off my shoulders. And the rest of the shoulder shaping turned out really nice after being cinched up!
Moral of the story: Always block your wool, and attention to finishing details can salvage an otherwise flawed project.
Can, not always. But don't write off a project until it's actually done unless it's obviously a trainwreck.
Here's a nice look at the lace details:
And here's a better look at the colors:
I'm gonna need to tweak the pattern a little when I find my notes. The edging at the bottom was a bit of improv (repeats of K1, YO, S1K2TogPSSO, YO, more or less what I used on the shoulder seams after I finished the increases) that I'm quite pleased with. It looks pretty and decorative and doesn't seem to be curling too badly, which is nice. I would have liked just a bit more yarn so I could do another repeat of it, but this works. I used a very stretchy bind off, which has the benefit of actually looking a little decorative too!
8/10 would knit again after pattern modifications.
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