Leaving River

River in repose over the window.
Click here to see the entire length.River has gotten quite long now, and I'm noticing that my progress has slowed lately. I have not lost interest in her. I have become attached. I have noticed this phenomenon in myself with really great, really long novels as well. When I get near the end, I stall. I enjoy the reading, and I want to know what comes next, but I know that as soon as I finish I will have to leave the world that I've been in while reading, and I don't want to. I know that River is going to be lovely when it's blocked, that only blocking will let me know just how much length I can get out of 2 skeins of kidsilk haze, and that I can't wear my stole in its current balled-up state with the needles hanging off of it.

But still. We've had a nice ritual. I get up early, grab River and the i-pod, and sit on my front deck for a few hours before work, listening to either Knitcast or Fibercast, drinking my tea, and knitting away. I've worked through a lot of my mohair issues with River. Prior to this, I've collected mohair at an almost frightening pace (thank you, Suzan), and yet rarely knit with it, because I hate knitting with mohair. By perservering through Birch, and now River, I think I understand where my issues lie.

I'm a very visual knitter. I work off pattern at the earliest point possible by reading the rows below as I knit. I rarely need stitch markers or a row counter, because I can simply look at what I've already done and see where the next increase or decrease lies. Most of the time, this is a great way to knit, but it does not serve me well with mohair lace. I find that mohair is easiest to knit when all the stitches are bunched up close to the ends of the needles. This means that a 17 stitch repeat will be shoved into a space of about 2 mm - not great for viewing what's gone before.

Detail of the lower edge rippling.
Through the course of knitting River, I've learned that the method that works best for me is to place stitch markers between repeats (since the repeats undulate horizontally this is not exact, more on that with pattern notes), and engage in a mantra of continual counting. On the pattern side I count off stitch repeats - 4 sets of 5 plus 2 knit stitches; pattern repeats - 4; number of lead and end knits - undulating, with positive and negative values, and edge stitches - 3 at each end. On the resting rows I count off stitches between markers - 22, 17, 17, 23. The process is unique to the pattern (and this one is unique to my version - this River has 4 horizontal repeats rather than 3), but it works. Break the components into logical categories, count the categories off, repeat. I'm sure I've lost many of you with this gibberish that has no application for anyone but me, but the main point is that it works, and that the counting in this odd little system has become a kind of Om for me. I count. Sip my tea. Count again. It's morning and the sun is coming up over the mountains. Count again.

I will miss it. Perhaps this means more of my mohair will get knit.