going loopy

Looped picot bind off on my Cladonia shawl - it's pretty tedious. There's the casting on and the casting off and more casting on and more casting off. More casting on, even more casting off and you are four stitches along. Over the course of 310 stitches you can see how this could get a tad brain numbing.

My problem with it really is that once I've done a dozen or so of these picot-adorned loops, I decide that I'm not actually happy with the previous rows and rip it all out. My first problem was with knitting the eyelet bands and lace border in two different colours. It didn't work and I didn't like the grey-brown (Truffle Hunt) next to the lavender (Blanket Fort).

I didn't even make it to the looped picot bind off that time. I frogged all the way back to the stripes and knit the eyelet bands and lace all in the lavender. Then, to hold the whole thing together I knit an extra garter stitch band in dark blue before starting the edging in lavender.

And knit about a dozen of the bind off loops before deciding, no, not right, and ripped it. No photo. Then I repeated this, knitting instead two extra stocking stitch rows in the dark blue so that they would recede between the garter stitch rows. Made it through about half a dozen picoted loops and, no, not right, it's the dark blue, too obtrusive. Ripped that back.


















So yes, now I'm considering knitting that extra two rows of stocking stitch in the grey-brown (even though I'm not fond of it next to the lavender it may be the subtlety that's required) and then proceeding with the looped picot bind off. If you happen to have persevered in reading this far, any opinions?