Bitches Get Stitches

there were several times
that i almost wrote about this shawl*

witty posts planned
impressive math moments
thoughts on its construction
and the realization the yarn was felting
as i “purled two on; knit one off”
(perils of the sewn bind off and bfl yarn)
“but look! i made it to the end just inches of left! huzzah!”

meh.

it all felt forced.

and now, in the face of the most fun part of knitting—being done—i find
myself unable to cast off. more specifically,
i can’t decide how to cast off.

so of course i’m compelled to write.

my go-to is the sewn bind off, but after taking a day to bind off the bottom edge, i…just can’t face that again so soon. i could do the simple knitted bind off, which is fast and tidy, but then there would be that row of Vs all along the RS of the shawl and that’s just tacky. plus, while this isn’t a lace shawl that would require a hard block, it will need to give quite a bit when i block it the knitted bind off won’t allow it. and before any of you tell me to use jeny’s surprisingly stretchy bind off, i’d like you to go ahead and look in the mirror and ask yourself why you hate yourself, knitting, and me so much that you’d wish that ugly-ass bind off on my hard work. this isn’t some toe up sock abomination.

having set the shawl aside to
do a little research on bind offs since,
after all this time away from knitting,
my memory cannot
be trusted.

(it can’t be trusted ever, really)

it looks like i’m going  with the russian bind off,
which i may or may not have ever done before;

i can’t remember.

*the beauty of this color, bmfa‘s “spruced,”
has proven impossible (for me),
in several bmfa bases,
to photograph
accurately