I’ve decided I dislike lace edging, finding it shifty and deceptive. You bind off the main body of the shawl, thinking you’re almost finished, and then find out you’ve really only done 2/3 of the knitting. Much muttering ensues about where the shawl can stick its needles.

On the upside, Prentice #2 has been bound off and tossed into the wash pile for blocking. I’ll get around to blocking it and sewing on the notions whenever I feel like laundering a blanket, two sweaters, some handwarmers, several pairs of socks, two hats, and several scarves.

Ravelry Watch
There are now only 15758 ahead of me in line, which puts me 228 people closer to Ravelry. Woo!

…apparently I’d watch. And keep watching until everyone had jumped. And then, after carefully thinking about every possible pro or con of jumping or not jumping, I’d still wind up jumping simply because everyone else is doing it so therefore it must be awesome.

Or that’s what I would do, if my relationship with Ravelry is any indication.

Found you!

• You signed up on Today.
• You are #24663 on the list.
• 15986 people are ahead of you in line.
• 0 people are behind you in line.
• 34% of the list has been invited so far.

I am nothing if not chronically behind the times. I first heard about Ravelry three months ago during Episode 48 of Cast-On and finally decided to join today.

I normally refuse to join social networking sites. I don’t do Friendster or Myspace or Facebook, despite having lots of people tell me that I should. They just seem like scary places to me. I’d sooner jump into a mosh pit of poisonous spiders.

But Ravelry seemed different. A lot less drunken photography and being tracked down by former bosses and people you don’t remember from 2nd grade, and a lot more, y’know, knitting.

So I jumped. And now I get to wait.

Ding ding ding ding ding! It is indeed a toy. Here’s the rest of the picture:

Well. That’s not very polite. Hey, panda! Turn around, will ya?

That’s better. Did you think you were looking at a butt closeup this whole time?

Pattern: Panda, from World of Knitted Toys
Yarn: Plymouth Encore, #217, and Pittsburgh, #9143, 1 skein each
Needles: Addi Turbos, US 7 (4.5mm)

This is my first finished object since April. And I haven’t even been afflicted with startitis or anything. Bad knitter. Bad, bad knitter.

I had a love/hate/love affair with this project. I mean, it’s a panda! What’s not to love about a panda? But oh, the pattern gave me grief. Part of it was that I didn’t have faith in the directions. I set it aside for a couple months in hopes that it would metamorphose into the panda I was envisioning rather than the panda I was knitting.

I came very, very close to ripping out the whole thing and panda-fying a Bobbi Bear pattern instead. But I’d already put the eyes and ears on by that point and I swear it made a sad “please don’t rip me!” face at me. So I relented, and just knit the rest of it as fast as I could. But when it was done, it turned out to be cute!

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