Shetland Tea Shawl is OFF THE NEEDLES!

I'm very excited--last night I finished the knitting on my Shetland Tea Shawl, and today (pretty much all day) I grafted the border together!

Here's how it looked at about 5:00 this afternoon:

I spent a good portion of the day sitting down and staring at it, then weaving in some crochet cotton, then waking away (taking a break) and coming back, then ripping out what I'd done and doing it again, rinse, lather, repeat. I gave myself a headache, but after dinner I tackled it again and while it's not perfect, it's as good as it's gonna get and I'm thrilled with it.

Here it is, kind of smoothed out on the carpet. This isn't blocked yet, of course.

And here's an artsy-fartsy shot, done at night under incandescent lights and all, but you can see the beads glinting from around the Diamond Madeira band.

I modified the original in a few ways:

1. I added a half repeat of the Diamond Madeira band, which widened the shawl quite a bit;
   
2. I added beads in the Diamond Madeira portion (which I'm just thrilled with); and
3. I totally changed the border. See my many previous posts about it if you want more info.

Of course since all these pictures are taken under artificial light, the color is off. The most accurate one is the first picture with the pins and such.

Now I'm girding my loins (no, not literally) for washing and blocking it. I've got to clear a space for it on the floor, since it needs to be somewhere out of the way. I'll probably end up clearing out most of the stuff in the center of my sewing/craft room to have enough floor space. The bed isn't big enough, not to mention that it gets used. My wonderful DH understands about my need to make things, but I think he might not be pleased if he couldn't use the bed tomorrow night.

I also didn't take a picture of the socks I'm working on, as it's been absolutely horridly hot here. We went on a bike ride this morning, got home at 10:30, and there was no way my kids were going to go back outside. Not even for a trip to the library! I don't know if they're going to be up for another bike ride tomorrow morning, but the enthusiasm was waning this evening.

I hope everyone is having a great week so far!