It's Curtains for Eventide

Must be this cold weather OR the fact that I've been recovering from a bronchial thing, but I've been getting a lot of my knitting projects completed lately.  This project is the Eventide Scarf designed by Laura Nelkin.  It is a gorgeous scarf but boy, was it a bugger to knit.

Now, in all fairness, I haven't done a LOT of beadwork in my knitting but I'm not a stranger to it.  I don't know if it was the placing of the beads, the unusual stitches, or the fact that I knit Continental-style which caused the problems but I sure don't plan to knit another one any time soon.  Actually, it could have been a combination of all three factors.

The biggest problem I had with it was the fact that I couldn't get into any set rhythm while I knit because I was always having to stop and change hands and then maneuver the beads into place and then wrestle them back where they were supposed to be after I completed the stitch and then get my hands and yarn back into position for my normal style of knitting.  The ladies in my group who were NOT continental knitting seemed to be having an easier time of it in that regard.

Once I finally got past the rows with the beads, things went a little quicker.  My main complaint then was the fact that I couldn't let my concentration lapse for a minute when I was working on this.  It was a fussy pattern.  I couldn't do my usual "watch TV and knit" routine.  Plus I've always enjoyed the fact that, if I make a mistake, I can usually work my way backwards to the place where I needed to correct things and then fix the problem and continue on OR I could drop a stitch at the point where a mistake might be rows below, dropping that stitch all the way down to the offensive stitch and then rework it back up to my current row.  Well, forget doing any of that with this pattern.  My goodness, it was a real bear trying to correct anything.  It was just very hard to read and to "tink" or "frog" (for you knitters) if you, God forbid, had to go back.

The end result was a lovely scarf, however, and that gives me a certain sense of satisfaction.  Believe me, there were MANY points when I was ready to just throw the darn thing in a corner and give up on it in frustration.  I'm glad that I stuck with it.  It's "curtains" for this particular pattern in my house, though.  "Eventide" has been banished to the perpetual night within my folder of "completed projects."