Success!

I have figured out the PROBLEM with the Smoke Ring with Lace Edging cowl by HeartStrings! This Olympic Victory was made possible (oops, wrong speech ...) Anyway, thank yous are due to my mom and "the Yarn Nutt" (I'll see if she'd like a trackback and edit this if she does).

For future reference and to help out any other poor soul who's madly googleing away trying to figure this out. Here's my version:

...Remove marker. Put a point protector or rubber band on the right hand needle to keep the work from sliding off while you work the edging from right to left around the tube. Use a single needle of the same size as your circular to work the edge stitches.

Decorative Bind Off Edging

Foundation Row (right side of work facing you): K1, YO, K1, turn.

Row 1 (WS): Slip 1 as if to purl to put working yarn onto right needle, p2tog, turn.
Row 2 (RS): Sl1 as above, YO, SSK (one stitch of edging, one from main piece), turn.

Repeat Row 1 and 2 until all stitch.....

Each repeat 'eats' a stitch from the correct side with the second slipped stitch in the SSK. The edging looks rather wonky now, as the chain stitch selvage is turning to the inside of the cowl and then entire edging is rolling to the outside due to the stocking stitch, but when it's blocked (as lace really needs to be), it should form a nice series of little loops. I will need more T Pins! There's 132 little loops going around this thing and that doesn't count all the lace around the bottom!

No picture yet, as I've only done about an inch of the bind off so far. It's slow going, but that's been the word of the day on this project. Everything from the provisional CO to the lace repeats has taken me longer than I estimated.

Lessons learned from this first Knitting Olympics. 1) I'm not really project monogamous material. I need at least one house and one travel knitting project. This is something I know from my stitching, too. 2) I don't like working under a deadline, though I can. My knitting and stitching is the one place where I don't usually have any deadlines (unlike at work), so having that pressure invade my 'safe' zone wasn't so much fun. 3) Lace takes longer than you think it will.

All those things being said, if this phenomena repeats in 2008, will I sign up? You betcha!