Well, after a spectacularly disturbing day at work, I was looking forward to the reward of meeting a milestone on one of my projects -- the secret project with the Debbie Bliss Baby Casmerino. After what seemed like an infinite progression of garter stitch, I finally got to bind off.
And then I noticed something disturbing... the top of the piece is wider than the bottom of the piece. I had noticed this a little bit while I was knitting, but thought it was just the way things were stretching on my circulars when I was trying to measure. But last night, the reality of the situation became obvious. It's a little under 21-1/2" at the bottom and a little under 22" at the top. What's sort of funny about this is that this radical expansion didn't occur evenly... it started about 2/3 of the way through.
On the positive side, I think this means that I have gotten a lot more comfortable in my use of the Continental technique (I used to work the yarn with my left hand, but not in a very efficient way) and have "loosened up".
On the negative side, I have no idea whether or not something that is meant to be machine washed will respond to blocking to get it into a shape that will be roughly square. Has anyone out there blocked a Baby Cashmerino project?
So now I am trying to decide whether or not to chalk this one up to "experience" or not. There's still time for me to replace this gift with something else, not made by hand, or something made by hand but much smaller... so now I will have to do some thinking.
