Finishing. Who needs it?

All the Fancy Knitters will tell you that the key to making a knitted item look great is finishing. "It's all in the finishing," they say. They. Harumph. They love weaving in ends and blocking their items. I don't.

I know there's nothing special about me and my dislike for these necessary evils. Is there a club for people who don't like the finishing parts? I'll tell you right now that if there were such a club, we'd be a bunch of cool kids for sure. Too cool for school. Too cool to finish our fracking items. So very cool that we'd wear our shit around all jacked up and not care. Because we just don't like the finishing. And we're cool.

Non-knitters: Weaving in ends is taking all the long strings of yarn hanging off your work and tucking them in so they don't show, and so the garment doesn't completely unravel. Blocking is... ugh. I don't even want to explain it. Here. Just look.

This is what my scarf would look like if I blocked it -- if I pinned the sides of the scarf down so it would lie flat, and then used the tried and true finishing techniques handed down through the ages to ensure that it stays flat:

Ok, well, the edges wouldn't be rolling up like that if I'd blocked it.

Anyway, because I'm too cool for school, this is what my scarf actually looks like:
You know that all that jealousy isn't good for you, right?

This is the back side:



So. To review. "Blocked":



Too cool for school:

This particular endeavor was "inspired" by a scarf in last year's Banana Republic catalog. I quite liked it, and was sure I could make it. Even though I wasn't exactly sure how many stitches to cast on to make sure it was long enough, I figured some-hundred-and-something would work (It was last year. Who remembers last year?).

My scarf is definitely longer than the scarf in the catalog.


(By the way, I couldn't have rolled my scarf up like that if it had been blocked. Advantage: non-finishers.)

Um, also, have I mentioned that the scarf is very long?


I grant you that that if the scarf were flat (ok, blocked) it wouldn't look so much like a long, tubular...well, tube. It would look more like that Banana Republic scarf. Only better, because mine is made of Manos del Uruguay.

Wait a minute.

I wish you could see me feeling a slow burn and shaking my fists at the sky right now.

DAMN YOU, MANOS DEL URUGUUUUAAAAAAYYYYY!