Citron on the Blocking Mats... Mittens in Progress

Having a good time working on my knitting projects this weekend.  My Citron is on the blocking mats. Had a bit a RIDICULOUS amount of frustration working on this last night.  At my knitting group yesterday afternoon, I knew I could only get part way through the ruffle border before I was destined to run out of yarn.  I talked to Marilyn, my shop's knitting guru, and we figured at least 10 yards of yarn should be an ample amount to reserve for the cast off row... ummm, the last row has 540 stitches, just so you know.  I reserved what I thought was WAY MORE than 10 yards and confidently set out to cast off.  Wouldn't you know, just about 1/2 way through the cast off, I ran out of yarn.  I was doing a stretchy sort of bind off I've learned and I wondered if the bind off was eating up my yarn more quickly than I anticipated.  Discouraged and anxious to finish this project, I set out to undo the bind off and also undid the prior row to free up some yarn.  Ugh.  It was tedious and time consuming and I kept dropping stitches because the yarn is just fuzzy enough to catch on itself.  So by the time I unknit all those stitches, picked up a lot of dropped stitches, and then set out to AGAIN bind off all those stitches (did I tell you, there are 540 stitches in the last row?)... well, let's just say I was really REALLY happy to be done. 

No beauty shots of this lovely wrap just yet but here's a sneak peek of how this looks blocked. I do have to say I am much more happy with this shawlette now that it's been blocked.  A lot of the m1 increases made the stockinette sections look kind of sloppy, but the blocking straightened out things nicely.  I wish I would have had more yarn for more ruffle rows at the end.  But overall, I am liking this.



Don't you just love self-striping yarn like this!?



And I am smitten with my mittens... they are a blast to make!

I started these last Sunday and they are

my first official project from my mission to make

many, many projects from the book entitled

"Sock Yarn One-Skein Wonders"