Goodness Gracious, What's This?

Well, my stars! I do believe these are the last blocks of Viola a-blocking! Crazy to believe that this is all going to look sorta like a flower someday, isn't it?

Fixed It

When last we met, I was having a bit of a boo-hoo in my beer because I screwed up the assembly of the last block. It's all better now, see:

And doesn't that orange line make better sense? No? Well, wait till the blocks go together in the glorious whole.

Alas, I have no more Viola progress to show you because fixing the mess was the last thing I did before leaving on two weeks of travel. And a giant pile of blanket blocks is not exactly ideal travel knitting. Takes up room in the suitcase, for one thing. And the plane seatmates may not be too crazy about your spreading your blanket over their laps while you add on blocks.

So a new project for travel was in order, and I grabbed Willamette and some cheap sparkly sock yarn. (cheap and sparkly, that's me!) Actually, I really think the yarn adds to the theme of the pattern, which is the ripples and texture of the Willamette River in Portland:

What intrigued me about the pattern was the herringbone stitch that makes up the main section, shown here both front and back. (linen stitch on the tails). I had a hard time catching on to it from just the verbal description, but YouTube to the rescue! I found it easy and fun once I saw a demonstration.

Once I got going, I also found that the edging is what amounts to an i-cord knitted along as you go. That might really come in useful some other time, I think. So I just knit along, increasing the width, until I come to the end of the first ball of yarn and then start decreasing through the second ball.

And how do you like my improvised short needles? No use poking your fellow passengers in the ribs when the projects is so narrow.