Is There Such a Thing as Finishitis?

We all know about Startitis.  It’s the desire to start new knitting projects, often several new projects at once.  We all know I’ve suffered from (and succumbed to) Startitis many times in the past.

I think I’ve been going through a bout of Finishitis, and it feels very strange.  It sort of started with the Fireside (or maybe with Husband’s sweater?), and then the Fiddlehead Mittens, but it hit a whole new level last week:

I took the final step for finishing Henry.

Longtime readers will recall that I ran out of yarn for Henry and had to frog the swatch I’d made so I could learn the funky stitch pattern before casting on the four-hundred-some stitches needed to knit the actual scarf.  I frogged the swatch but had to soak the yarn to un-kink it, and that’s where I’d gotten stuck.  “Oh, I’ll get around to it someday” is something of a motto of mine for many things, and I’ve been “meaning to” soak that bit of yarn for what, three years now?

I finally did it.  Soaked, hung to dry, reballed… I’m ready to go.  I think this might actually happen, folks.  Henry will finally be a wearable scarf, instead of tethered to his size-three circulars.  That will be awesome.

I really hope this is the right amount of yarn, because this is all I have.

Henry the Scarf

This is Henry. Henry's a scarf that's knit lengthwise, and has a beautiful herringbone slip-stitch pattern that looks complicated and difficult but really isn't. Henry's 450-some stitches long, and that's a lot of stitches to cram onto my little size 3 circulars. One row takes for-ev-er to knit: I got almost two rows done in two hours of knitting group the other day. OY.

The yarn I'm using is special. It's Knit One Crochet Too's now-discontinued Richesse et Soie, a 65/35 cashmere-silk blend that is pretty much too sumptuous for words. I've had it stashed for years -- bought four balls of it one-by-one from a yarn shop near the school where I worked in Georgia. I've been holding on to them, wondering what to do with them, wondering if I'd just keep this gorgeous yarn just to have it, until Knitty posted Henry and I just knew that a herringbone scarf is what this yarn wants to be. Is it for me? Is it for Husband? I haven't decided yet. We'll probably steal it back and forth from one another.

Since it's apparently going to take me forever to make this baby anyway, I guess we'll just cross that bridge when we come to it. I've got some plane rides in my near future, and Henry is still perfectly purse-sized, so he'll be my carry-on companion.

In case you're confused by the photo: the scarf itself is gray, the provisional cast-on is with leftover sock yarn, hence the blue. It's not a part of the finished product.