Finished!!!

I've been diligently knitting away on my Hanami Stole this week and I cast-off the last stitch this afternoon. Yippeee! Well, I did join this KAL to motivate me to finish my Hanami and I guess it worked. Just a couple of insights now that I'm done: One, don't use laceweight slippery silk yarn for this pattern. I used ColourMart silk double stranded and my finshed stole is rolling like crazy. I know blocking will help, but I suspect it won't stop the stole from curling under along the sides when I'm wearing it. This yarn was too fine to knit this stole single stranded and knitting double stranded was almost murderous. I had to pay very close attention to every single stitch to make sure I caught both strands, and the casting off was just awful. OK, I made the cast-off harder because I added beads to the ruffle (I wanted the extra weight to counteract curling). Long story short: use wool, alpaca, cashmere, etc, but skip the smooth silk yarns for this one.

The next observation: the basketweave section demands careful attention to avoid mistakes. Even with attention, I did my fair share of tinking. Let's get real, I tinked many rows when I discovered I was off a stitch or two at the end. Now I consider myself to be an intermediate/advanced lace knitter and I don't usually tink much, so just know that you aren't a "bad" knitter if you have to tink a fair amount. The basketweave section *does* get better after that 1st 2 repeats and it *does* eventually come to an end. After that, a mistake here and there doesn't matter because no one will be able to see it (gotta love that not really random, random look to the cherry blossoms :-)

I'll post pictures once I get her blocked. Good luck to everyone casting on!
Kristina