Finally, finally, and with some reluctance, I finished the last pattern row tonight. All that’s left is the ribbing across the top.

On November 23, I opened my yellow Barbara Walker charted treasury copy wide enough to photocopy page 146 to start this afghan. I only made one copy. Given the stress on the paperback’s binding and how I didn’t want to do that again, that was dumb.

So in all that time I’ve been keeping pairs of post-it notes to underline which row I was working from to keep my eyes and brain from skittering all over the page and losing their place from stitch to individual stitch. The stickum wears off, you put on two more side by side to cover the width of the written row, repeat, repeat, later join Wordle (yesterday!) and use the used-up ones for sketching quick notes on.

As for the pattern, that piece of paper is looking pretty ratty at this point. But better it than my book.

The brightness of nighttime lighting reflecting off the whiteness of the page made it hard to see the stitches and I was forever pushing it up a bit out of the way and having it slide back down to my lap. I was so close to not needing it–but with the complexity of that piece and the parts that are counter-intuitive I didn’t dare risk it.

Ribbing. It really only needs that ribbing. It’s kind of hard to believe.

Finally, finally, the thing let me get a better picture of the color as a going-away present.

And in all that time I never realized till I went to look up the page number for this post just now (since it didn’t print out on the xerox) that it was supposed to be garter stitch separating the undulating waves. I’d done all of that purl-side out. All of it. All that time I’d stared at all those little dots and x’s and slanting lines and the like, easily a hundred hours, I’d had no idea I was being a rebel.

Well, good, then, because I like it better this way.