Shedir is done!!!

Whoo hoo!!!

Pattern: Shedir from the knitty.com 2004 Breast Cancer Awareness Month surprise
Yarn: Rowan Calmer in Coffee Bean
Needle: addi TURBO, size5 and SB dpns, size5
cast on: August 31 cast off: September 11

We started off beautifully. The pattern was coming along great!!
All the side cabling is done, time to start in on the decreases...
Then all heck broke out! The brown turned to mud! There was no recognizable pattern to be found, so I ripped back four rows and put it back on the needle. The stitches got twisted and misaligned and went right back to mud again. In a fit of red-headed madness, I frogged the whole frickin' thing.
The patterns repeat eight times, but it wasnt the repeating part that got me confused, it was the decreases. I figured I would throw a stitch marker in for the initial row start and then some reminder clips after each repeat. Those little green markers are what saved me on the decreases. They were helpful reminders telling me that I was in the middle of a repeat and not at the beginning, so when someone ran by to ask me a question, I could go back and count eight stitchs instead of 128!
The finale! I am so in love with this design and the yarn, and the needles, and the stitch marker I made up from old earring beads. I am also so in love with DH for my Coach birthday bag! He is so awesome. I am constantly bombarding him with emails of all of my online shopping carts. He even had the kids pick me up a gift certificate for my LYS Inua Wool. Yeah for sock yarn!!

That star at the top is so darn cute! The author of the pattern has some other really great patterns. All-in-all, it was my first cabling experience and the results are beautiful. It was relatively easy to follow, there is one error on the chart that doesn't mention moving 1stitch back, but if you follow the picture, then you will easily realize the error. It tells you on front page which rows to move over 1, but the info got dropped on the second page with the chart. The yarn was a breeze. I haven't worked with acrylic before, I usually just stick with wool (if Qivuit is unavailable, geez...), but I would have to say, the cotton/acrylic "microfibre" is dream to work with. No grit, no shine, no shrinkage! Next time I will move up a needle size. It is snug over my ponytail and I would make the ribbing 1/2" longer so it covers more of my ears. This is Alaska, hats are necessities, not just fashion!