Sigh. On Saturday I got to my mental stopping point on the blue baby blankie, knit a final round, and gleefully started on the border. First I started with the pretty leaf-vein vertical pattern I found in Knitting on the Edge. I quickly realized that knitting 36 stitches for every one bound-off stitch was really inefficient, and the lace holes at the edge of the blanket weren't a good idea for something meant to be sturdy.
So I went down to a 9-stitch border of seed and garter stitch, then about 40 stitches in, I started picking up a live stitch on both the right and wrong sides. It took a bit of yarn wrapping to knit the stitches together on the wrong side, but actually I liked the way the edge was laying with a stitch picked up every row. It had a firmer, flatter edge.
But I began to worry about running out of yarn--by the time I got one wedge of the hexagon bound off I was really nervous. Rather than knitting until the skein ran out and hoping it would go halfway around, I had the brains to weigh the yarn remaining in the skein. A bit more than half a skein left, meaning something like half a skein consumed by one-sixth of the blanket. No real hope of finding this same dyelot again (I think this yarn is at least two years old).
So I spent a good bit of last night ripping out the border, and I'm unknitting that last round, stitch by stitch. It's really taken the wind out of my sails, when I was so excited about being in the home stretch. I'll probably see if I can finish ripping tonight, but if not, I'll set it aside for a few days and try to finish something else. While I'm at it, I might count stitches so I can know exactly what's ahead of me--even if that's not the most motivational thing to do.
I'm going to have a lot of unscheduled time and waiting time this weekend in San Diego while Jane walks, so I bet I can finish it then.

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