Finishing

It's amazing how much work can fall into the "finishing" section of a knitting pattern. To the novice, "finishing" sounds like you are actually close to the end. This is a dirty, dirty lie. Case in point: I'm finishing the Falling Stars sweater.

Finishing means I reinforce both sides of the center steek stitch with tiny backstitch in sewing thread.

Andrew, possibly the most patient person on the planet not currently viewed as a major religious figure, looked at what I was doing, looked at me, and said, "Never. I would never do that." 

But I did, in hopes of finishing a sweater.

Finishing means I cut the steek (with the mandatory liquid courage).

Finishing means I pick up stitches all along each side of the steek, knit several rows in 1x1 ribbing, adding buttonholes on one side, and cast off using a tubular castoff that is so tedious yet brain-consuming that it is a form of working meditation.

Finishing means I turn the bottom hem under at a purl row and carefully sew the live stitches of the body (remember that his is a fingering-weight sweater) to the inside of the sweater. This takes so long that I abandon hope of ever finishing (finishing, my ass), sure that I have been sucked into a time warp in which I stitch and stitch and stitch and yet never get any closer to the last live stitch.

Finishing means I wash and  block the sweater. I do it at this point in the "finishing" in order to make sure I hem the sleeves at the correct length, and also sew the ribbon over the steek without making the sweater sag or pull from a ribbon that is too long or too short.

Finishing means I pick buttons, find they don't have enough in stock, shake my fist at the capricious retail gods and then pick other buttons.

Finishing means I spend 20 minutes staring at ribbon wondering why there's seems to be no ribbon in between 1/4" and 7/8".

At this moment in time, I am finishing by attempting to hand sew a ribbon down each side of the raw edges of the steek stitches.

I'm not at all pleased with the way it looks, and I don't really know where to go from here.

Finishing. Yeah, right.