A Good Finish

Every project has a finish.  When you have guests over for dinner, at the end of the evening, you finish by saying, "Good night."  Movies finish with credits to those who participated in the project.  A good day of hard work finishes with a peaceful night of restful sleep (or at least that is always my hope!).  Knitting projects finish with a bind off.  I would say blocking, but not all projects are blocked.

So this brings me to my current dilemma.  What is the best bind off to use for my Citron Shawl by Hillary Smith Callis?  I am knitting this in the cornflower gradient colorway of lace weight yarn from Desert Vista Dyeworks, for the Dramatic Knits KAL for November.  Just one more row until I have to come up with a solution:

For anyone who is familiar with this pattern, I have added 2 sections to the original pattern.  I did this in order to get more of the gradient colors into the shawl.  It looks as though I will miss the last color, which is the lightest.  I do not mind this so much, though, because, I had an unfortunate incident with a blueberry Izzie Pop that spewed in the front seat of my car.  Enough said on that topic!

I am looking for a stretchy type bind off.  This is something I have not always had good success with (as evidenced by the single sock knit of some beautiful self-striping Opal yarn, somewhere in the bottom of my closet....waiting for me to cut off, yes, I said cut off, my failed attempt at some kind of a sewn bind off.....which explains the reason that sock continues to sit in the bottom of my closet for over a year, now.....). 

You would think that a person who loves toe up socks would have mastered several different styles of binding off.  Well, now I must confess, the real reason I love toe up construction is that it eliminates the need for the Kitchner stitch.  I learned to compensate for the bind off by knitting my last row with a needle that it 2 sizes larger than the one I used to knit the sock.  It sometimes gives a "loopy" appearance to that last row, but, I can get those socks on and off my feet and up my calf.

I am just really concerned about using that method on this shawl.  So, if anyone has a suggestion (particularly if there is a You-tube demo to be found that goes with that suggestion), I would be most grateful to learn of it!

When spinning yarn, there comes a time to finish as well.  I did complete the spinning of 4 ounces of my Polwarth in the Haunted Vinyard colorway from Cloudlover, for the Knit Girllls SAL/KAL.

My plan is to navajo ply this single into a 3 ply yarn, thereby retaining the integrity of the individual colors in the yarn. 

But before I do any of this, I need to make a run to Target.  I am thinking a nice Apple-Caramel Latte for a breakfast on the run (in decaf and low-fat, no sugar- where's the fun in all of that?) will be a nice way to start this overcast, fall day.  I can dream of apple orchards, picking apples (on a sunny day, of course), dipping them in warm, gooey caramel, yummmmmmm.......  If we cannot have sun every day, we have to find a way to keep the fantasy alive!