I'm having a bout of finishitis lately, so let's all enjoy it while it lasts. I present the Gryffindor House Scarf. 
This was my go-to mindless knitting project this summer. This scarf is one very, very long tube, so I experimented with different types of jogless jogs on the stripes and I must say that I didn't care for any of them and abandoned my search for the perfect jogless jog. The beginning/end of each round comes at the side "seam" anyway, so it all works out just fine.
Although the actual knitting of the scarf is pretty much mindless, it is a lot more knitting that I thought it would be, and this is a bit on the heavy side for a scarf. I finished the actually knitting in November, then put off giving the scarf a bath and properly blocking it. Once that was done, I put off adding the fringe for another month and a half, until today. I'm ashamed to admit, it took less than an hour to cut and attach all 150+ pieces of fringe.
The princess loved the scarf. She had really wanted it. (Believe me, I wouldn't have come up with the idea of knitting almost six feet of giant tube scarf on my own!) I didn't take any close up photos of it because, well, it does have a bit of yellow lab hair on it. . . just one more thing that will discourage me from properly blocking knitted items. I block them on the floor, and although I do have blocking pads, let's face it, the dog is near the floor and when his fur swirls around, it comes to land on the floor. . . and on top of whatever I might be blocking. It's rather discouraging after all of the storage of yarn in plastic totes and the efforts made to keep WIP's properly bagged up to avoid unnecessary contact with pet fur. C'est la vie.
I do wish I had a closer photograph of the fringe, because I did a lot of thinking about it while I was attaching it today. Other than trimming a couple of overly long pieces of fringe, I left the rest of it to be more or less the right length. This is a handmade scarf. It shouldn't have factory perfect fringe. To be honest, I was also a bit afraid that once I started evening out and trimming the fringe, I would end up trimming it all off. I had horrible visions of the haircut my mom gave me when I was about eight. I had very long hair and, though she said she was just going to trim an inch or two, she couldn't get my hair straight and ended up cutting off over six inches in her attempts to make it even. To this day, I'm still not sure whether she's really lousy at cutting hair or whether she did this on purpose as a way to get my hair shorter without actually telling me up front.
Families are a funny thing. I've been very much enjoying the family (Should I say household? It's much more inclusive.) at Downton Abbey. I completely missed this show when it first aired, but the internet is full of knitters who are obsessed with it, so when I discovered that Season Two was about to air, I streamed the first season on Netflix and was all caught up in a couple of days. Now, I am among the faithful who watch it as PBS releases new episodes. And now I've got Nancy watching.
I considered it my duty to let Nancy know what she was missing with Downton Abbey. She, who has turned me on to Leverage and almost any book written by Philippa Gregory, among other things, just couldn't miss out on this show. And I am adding this link to one of those Which Downton Abbey Character Are You? quizzes. In a true sign that blogging is so yesterday, there is not one single share option that will give the HTML for the result for a blogger to use. So, take my word for it, I'm Lady Sybil Crawley. And here's what it says about that:
You are Lady Sybil Crawley. The youngest daughter of Lord Grantham, you’re compassionate, strong, and really concerned about social justice. You’d also like to be able to vote. The bravest and most idealistic member of your family, you’re the most likely to end up at a political rally, try and help a servant to a better job, or scandalize your sisters by wearing pants to a party.
So, let me ask Nancy and anyone else who wants to play, which is your Downton Abbey personality?
