Sunday Serenity #229

A Variety of Ice Cream Cones

Photographic Print by Karen M. Romanko

at art.com

Imagine standing in an ice-cream store able to choose one flavor out of a selection of 100 at least a third of which are flavors you are particularly fond of but have been denied access to for weeks because of an overstock on one flavor that had to be used up before other flavors new and old became available again.

That's how I'm feeling as I finish up the baby afghan and contemplate the near future in which I'll be free to return to old projects and pastimes or start new ones, a pleasure I've denied myself for most of the last four months now but especially the last six or so weeks.

I'm very close to finishing the afghan now. I have the two bobble edges on and that was supposed to be the end of the stitching, leaving only the trimming off of tails. But then I tried to fold it to make it compact to sit in my lap with the edges sporting dozens of tiny stray threads easily accessible and well lit and I was reminded how the final rows had gained six inches on the first few rows without gaining stitches. This was partly a tension problem and partly due to the foundation chain being less elastic than the double and tripple crochet stitches used throughout.

As long as you don't try to fold it it is not noticeable. But blankets get folded. And the look of that extra long edge really bugs me. So I decided to add a row of slip stitches across the final row to mimic the chain stitches at the beginning. I is taking up slack as I hoped. Now I just have to take care not to make this end shorter than the other. If I do, I'll have to take out part or all of the slip stitches and try again, adjusting my tension.

I'm still on track to getting it in the mail tomorrow I think. Depends on how soon I get it ready for washing though and then how long it takes to dry and whether Ed gets home from work in time to run to the post office before it closes. It may not get mailed until Tuesday but I'm not going to berate myself too much if so. I'm fairly proud of the way I've stayed on track with this project to see it through to the end in a rather constricted time frame.