gray sunset wrap

one reason i love working through a project is that so many stories get woven into one.

there's the 'life' story that reminds you of that moment in time.

but there's also the 'craft' story. i don't mean the michaels/puffy paint 'craft'. i mean the pieces where you think: that's the piece where i learned how to ____________. honing your craft.

this piece is kinda like that.

first, the 'life' of this piece. one day, at a school staffing, i noticed the wrap on a fellow coworker. it seemed simple enough: rectangular, one button hole, three buttons. i thought, "i could make that."

a few weeks later, i was in indianapolis with my husband for the holidays. i was itching for something to do, so my mother-in-law took me to the greatest knitting shop, called knit stop. it would be so dangerous for me if it weren't safely tucked away in another city several states over.

sweet brenda tolerated many minutes (hours?) of my awe and pure indecisiveness before suggesting, 'that yarn looks good.' and it did. it was amazing. it was lang yarns, mille colori big, color 757.0070

i got started on the wrap while in indy, and finished it up within the month. my mom had knitted some socks for me for christmas, chastising me for not finishing projects. so i was sure to get this one done!

one of the most interesting 'accidents' of this yarn is the striping pattern. the width of the wrap matched the length of each color stripe perfectly, so the wrap ended up having these beautiful stripes that looked intentionally gradual instead of the typical striping clumps seen in knitting projects. i'm not very big on that kind of striped look, so this accident worked in my favor.

through this project, i learned how to knit buttonholes and sew on buttons properly. (i've sewed on buttons for years but will forever do it differently now!) i also learned how to block a knitted piece. the folks down at fancy tiger told me how to do it. although i'm not sure it worked out totally well. perhaps its because the yarn is 50% wool, 50% acrylic. perhaps it was the style of the wrap. you see, i used the stockinette stitch for this piece and experienced a lot of curling (not suprisingly.) i need as much width as i can get to achieve the look i want with this wrap. so i needed to do something to weigh it down, or make it lay flat. the fancy tiger folks advised i wash it in warm water with woolite, rinse it in warm water, and pin it on a towel. the pictures below show the process, except before i went back through and added a crazy amount of pins.

it helped, but isn't the best yet. my new idea- use our steamer and have marc steam it while i hold it spread out. you might think that's a weird idea but it worked great on the curly edge i got from the pins. we'll see. if nothing else works, i will add a gray border in garter stitch. but i really don't want to do that.

the piece is finished, but because the finishing isn't finished the way i want, i'm tagging this as an unfinished project. any blocking tips are appreciated. :)