Six Dollar Yarn

Some time ago, in an end-of-winter-clearance-sale yarn buying frenzy, I acquired a two-pound cone of mill-end wool tweed. It wasn't a color I would ordinarily choose, and I had no idea what sort of texture it would be, but it was six dollars for a two-pound cone of worsted weight wool, so, you know, how could I say no?

And then the cone arrived, along with many other yarn purchases, and I took one look at that tweedy behemoth and got a little overwhelmed. I stuck in in the closet. Not even the stash closet. In fact, for the past year (or is it two?), it's been living on my sock shelf. No idea why. I've been using it to keep the gym socks from rolling off the end of the shelf.

Last week I cleaned out my closet. Along with my pre-baby era work pants that don't come within two inches of fastening and some blouses with shoulder pads that would make a linebacker look petite, I re-discovered the wool bale. I figured, with winter coming on and the frigid San Diego temperatures that are bound to be upon us soon, I should consider my options with regard to this rather extraordinary amount of wool.

To give you an idea of how much wool we're talking about, here is a picture of the cone after I've wound off 800 yards of yarn (washing machine for scale).

I'm not sure I've even made a noticeable dent in it. To get a better idea of the amount of fabric I could reasonably produce, I knitted a swatch. The stuff knits up to about 4.5 stitches to the inch. But that's before washing. And frankly, I would rather scrub the bathroom floor with a toothbrush than knit this stuff without washing. It feels like baling twine soaked in vaseline. That would be the spinning oil, which has not been washed out the wool.

So after knitting my little swatch, I decided I'd better bite the bullet and wind the cone off into skeins for washing. I have a niddy noddy that makes 60" skeins, so I started winding the cone off by hand, counting 120 wraps for each skein, which should--if my math skills are at all functional--give me 200 yard skeins. I wrapped for a long time.

Eventually, I had four 200 yard skeins...and a still-full cone of yarn. But since I simply couldn't face winding off another skein, I took a break to wash the ones I already had. What a difference a wash makes! The skein on the left is unwashed. The skein on the right is washed.

You can see that the washed skein is much, much fluffier than the unwashed one, and also lighter and brighter in color, due to the absence of (most of) the spinning oil. I'm not sure what sort of oil they use for spinning, but it's tenacious. I soaked the wool in hot water with dishsoap for several hours, then rinsed it, then soaked it in Eucalan for a few more hours before hanging it to dry. I can still feel and smell oil in the washed yarn, so I'm guessing there is more blooming yet to be done, but that will have to wait until after knitting.

The washed yarn is quite tolerable. It's not soft--at least, not by my standards, but I am sort of a wool wimp. I love to knit with it, but I can't really stand anything itchier than a kleenex next to my skin. Which leaves me with a dilemma (naturally). I have at least 2000 yards--and possibly much more--of worsted weight wool in search of a project. It needs to be something that will not make contact with my skin. I don't need a car cozy or a sleeping bag. A sweater coat of some sort might be nice, but I don't have any patterns in mind. Anyone have any suggestions?

Spring Green

you are springgreen #00FF7F

Your dominant hues are cyan and green. Although you definately strive to be logical you care about people and know there's a time and place for thinking emotionally. Your head rules most things but your heart rules others, and getting them to meet in the middle takes a lot of your energy some days. Your saturation level is very high - you are all about getting things done. The world may think you work too hard but you have a lot to show for it, and it keeps you going. You shouldn't be afraid to lead people, because if you're doing it, it'll be done right. Your outlook on life is very bright. You are sunny and optimistic about life and others find it very encouraging, but remember to tone it down if you sense irritation.

the spacefem.com html color quiz

Stockinette to the Rescue

This is nowhere near seven feet of lace, and I am sick of knitting lace. Yes, I know, lace is wonderful, we love lace, I love lace. It is just the knitting of the lace that poses a problem for me.

And so, without even a little bit of guilt, I cast on some nice, plain stockinette, just to take the edge off.

My camera seems unwilling to process the color green. The actual color is darker and greener than this. (It is Elsebeth Lavold Classic Al in a colorway I can't currently put my hand on, but it's definitely green.) The pattern is Wendy Bernard's Opulent Raglan, from the fall 2008 Knitscene. It is the reason I stalked this issue of Knitscene and searched multiple stores to find a copy. (What is it with Interweave that they can't seem to issue subscriptions for this magazine? I know it's an occasional thing, but it always seems to come out four times a year, so why can't they just make it a regular thing and save us all a whole lot of bother trying to find copies of it?)

It's a charming pattern. I am loving the whole top-down, all-in-one-piece, no-seams sweater these days. What's that? Lazy? Why, yes--yes I am. Thanks for noticing! I am loving it so much that on Saturday, while waiting for my son to be weighed in for football (for which we had to drive--are you ready for this?--eighty miles round trip), I went to Barnes & Noble and bought Wendy's new book Custom Knits just for her terrific explanation of how to design top-down sweaters. Tammy just wrote a post about this book (and did one of the test knits that appears in it--go Tammy!), so I won't go into detail here, but it is good enough that I paid full price for it in a brick and mortar store just so I could take it home right away, which I almost never do.

Now, if I could just get some time to read it...

60 Inches

Several of you were horrified at the prospect of knitting 60 inches of lace. I am pretty horrified myself, but in the interests of honesty, please allow me to clarify. The 60 inches I have to knit is a strip of lace only about six inches wide.


It creates the trim for this sweater.


Although, to be fair, I need to knit 60 inches for the body PLUS 12 inches for each sleeve, for a total of 84 inches. For those of you who don't have elementary schoolers and haven't done your twelveses in a while, that's seven feet of lace. I don't care that it's only six inches wide. It's seven feet of lace.

I've called out the big guns for this one.

Hip Hop Grannies

Have you seen this? The Today Show aired them performing outside the Olympic stadium this morning!

And in contest news, Fibreholic is having a blogiversary contest for yarn prizes! Go check it out.

21 Inches

21 inches is a lot of ribbing.

This isn't a bad thing. I've been in need of a bit of comfort knitting lately, and working 2 x 2 ribbing in this delightfully soft alpaca-silk (Debbie Bliss alpaca silk dk) has been very comforting. But I'm coming up on 20 inches now, and the next part of this sweater calls for 60 inches of...lace. I'm not quite sure how I managed to ignore that part when I cast on for this in a fit of disgust over the lace sweater I was struggling with at the time; I seem to have untapped reserves of denial.

I think I'm going to need some new comfort knitting to get me through it. Not to mention the rest of the day.

Today is the first day of school here. I find it odd that school starts in mid-August. When I was a kid, it started in mid-September, and my kids are growing up in the same city as I did. In fact, my younger son actually started school in mid-July this year. He's just had a week off and returns today. My older son is starting...I'm having trouble with this...middle school today. He seems okay with it. It's his mother who's quietly falling apart.

I hated junior high (which is what they had instead of middle school when I was a kid). Absolutely hated it. Everything about it. It's a horrible time of life in the first place. There isn't enough money in the world to convince me to be 13 again. And I went to a particularly snobby, rich school, where I had neither the family, nor the money, nor the clothes to fit in. At all. I was too tall and too skinny and too shy. And a "brain". (Which, paradoxically, was my saving grace. I didn't care at all that smart wasn't cool. I knew damned well that smart was going to end up being more important than cute or cool in the long run. I was right, by the way. But it still sucked not to be cute or cool.)

So putting my little boy on the bus (at 6:55 in the morning!), which he's never ridden before, with a bunch of 7th and 8th graders, and watching it pull away to take him to the Bad Place awoke more than a few of my old demons. What if the other kids are mean to him? What if they laugh at him? What if he can't find the bathroom? What if the teacher yells at him? What if he gets hurt in gym class?

Realistically, I know that this child is smart and capable and outgoing, and even the nastiest comments roll right off his back without dimming his megawatt smile. Since kindergarten, he has always been at the center of any pack of kids; I used to find him after school by looking for the biggest clump of kids. He was always in the middle of it. He'll be fine. I know this. I'm just having trouble believing it.

FO: Petra

I've saved my favorite for last in this week's FO parade. This is my new favorite sweater. It took less than a week and I loved every minute of knitting it.

Pattern: Petra, by Julie Weisenberger of cocoknits. Size 37".

I love the design of this sweater. It is worked all in one piece from the bottom up. You cast on enough stitches for the back, then increase every other row to add stitches for the front. The unique method of increasing creates the little points in the fronts, and also angles the knitting, as you can see from the stripes on mine. I deliberately picked a self-striping yarn to exploit this interesting shaping.

The sleeves are knitted separately as tubes, then added to the body, and then the shoulders are given raglan shaping. The collar is just an extension of the fronts.

Yarn: Noro Transitions.

I love the yarn, too. Like most Noro yarns, it is a little rough in the skein, but softens when worked, and becomes quite soft and drapey after washing. It is a unique yarn, since the fiber content changes with the colors, giving it a variegated texture. It's bulky weight, so it knits up very quickly. (Too quickly, actually--I was a little sorry to finish this one.)

Modifications: I did have to modify this pattern to allow for greater length. This seemed more complicated than it actually was. I just worked the pattern as written, but started my waist shaping later in the pattern. Then, I added extra length again after finishing the increasing at the top of the waist shaping before beginning the armholes. I also lengthened the sleeves by quite a bit.

The yarn tricked me a little. Even though my washed swatch showed no change in gauge, this fabric grew significantly in length with washing. Both the body and sleeves grew about three inches. In fact, I ended up taking out the bindoff on the sleeves, shortening them, and binding them off again. This wasn't much of a problem, since the cuffs are knitted last, utilizing a provisional sleeve cast on.

And in case you're wondering about the gorgeous fastener, it's one of Romi's shawl pins! You can even order one of your very own here.

FO: Sahara

I'll be honest with you: this project was a disappointment. I love this pattern (Sahara, from stitchdivas). It is beautifully written and fun to knit. And I love the yarn, Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted. I suspect my lack of joy is, once again, the variegated nature of the yarn (this colorway is called Glenwood). I was so excited to get this yarn. The colors are so cheery and pretty. Alas, this finished fabric also looks like colorful tv static to me.

I also ran out of yarn and had to make short sleeves. I generally don't like short sleeves, because my arms are so skinny. In this case, they are particularly unflattering because they are so wide. I would probably like this project better if I could lengthen the sleeves to at least a 3/4 length, but that would require buying more yarn, and I'm not sure it's worth it.

The details, such as they are:
Pattern: Sahara, by stitchdivas
Size: Small (about 1" negative ease--I could have made this smaller)
Yarn: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted in Glenwood
Needles: Size 6 Knit Picks Options circular
Modifications: None, really. I made mine longer, but that's not really a modification, since the pattern calls for custom length. I also left off the beads on the edging, since the yarn was busy enough.

I suppose I'll have to give this one some thought. Perhaps we'll revisit it later.

FO: Ribbed Lace Bolero

I feel almost obligated to show you a successful, drama-free project after yesterday's post.

So I will.

This is the Ribbed Lace Bolero by Kelly Maher. (The link is to the free pattern on her blog.)

This was another simple, quick knit, made extra relaxing and pleasant by the yarn I used, which is a heavy worsted weight, single ply, hand-dyed silk I got from Destash last year. I think I used about 300 yards for this project.

I have no complaints about this project. If I were to do it again, I would probably use a slightly smaller needle for a little less relaxed gauge, but this does fit well. I've worn it several times already.

FO: Retro Ribby Twinset

I will confess, I don't love this project.

I started this twinset (The Retro Ribby Twinset, from Knitting Lingerie Style, by Joan McGowan Michael) last spring and really enjoyed knitting the camisole.

I didn't like my choice of yarn, though. It is superwash wool, which just doesn't make for a great summery top. I think my love affair with variegated yarns also started to wane with this project. I love variegated yarns. I cannot resist them. But I rarely like the way the look knitted up. This fabric actually reminds me of a tv test pattern. I don't buy variegated yarns anymore, although I do like a nice almost-solid yarn.

So I didn't cast on for the shrug part of the twinset right away. In fact, I didn't cast on for it until this spring.

I got the entire thing knitted in short order, but when I began sewing it up, things did not go well. I tried repeatedly to make it work out, and finally, in utter exasperation, called it quits for good. But I didn't rip. I don't much like the yarn anyway, so I stuffed the whole thing in the back of the stash closet, never to see the light of day again.

At least until the previously-mentioned post-Dickinson cleanup. I came across it and thought, "Well, it's almost done. It just needs a little sewing up. Maybe a good blocking with fix the odd fit." And so I pulled it out, sewed it up one more time, and blocked the living daylights out of it.

I still don't like it. It is just a poor design. The fronts are made in a way that they simply don't fit properly. Every version I've seen on Ravelry shares the same problem.

Even though I'll probably never wear this set, I don't consider it a failure. I learned quite a bit from knitting it, including short-row bust shaping, the fact that I don't like variegated yarns as much as I thought, and that, sometimes, even professional design are a flop.

FO: Gathered Pullover

Next up in the FO parade is the Gathered Pullover.

This was a really simple, fun knit. It is worked in the round in one piece to the underarms and then split for the fronts, so there isn't much seaming--always a good thing in my book. The cable is interesting and well-charted and serves the dual purpose of creating a focal point and adding shaping under the bust. The only caveat I would add is that there is a lot of plain stockinette. I consider this a plus, since I actually really enjoy plain stockinette, but if you're one of those people who find it about as much fun as sticking a dpn in your eye, you might want to skip this one. I have a lace sweater I can send you to work on instead.

Pattern: Gathered Pullover from IK
Size: I followed the directions for the 32" size, but used a slightly larger gauge, for a finished size of about 33.5". This is about 1.5" of negative ease.
Yarn: Jaegar Roma (nylon/viscose/angora). Nine balls.
Needles: Size 9 Knit Picks Options circular.
Modifications: I added 4 inches in length to the body, including an extra inch above the cable to lower it and raise the neckline, and about two inches in length to the sleeves. I also added waist shaping to draw in the waist about 4 inches. I left out the eyelets at the bust, because I couldn't understand why I would want little holes running across my breasts.

This sweater was an experiment in negative ease for me, and I am pleased with the results. It is clingy, but not tight. I am considering doing another of these in wool in a bit larger size for winter wear. It was enough fun that I wouldn't mind doing it again!

FO: Tahoe

I finally got around to doing a FOto shoot of all my unblogged FO's. Being a prudent blogger, however, I'm not going to show them all at once. One a day, people, just like candy bars. Let the FO parade begin!

We'll kick this thing off with one I've never even blogged at all. But there's a good reason for this. I've mentioned this project a couple of times in passing (I believe I called it "the ugliest thing I've ever made"). I made most of it while we were skiing in Lake Tahoe in February. It was supposed to be Juliet, but that...didn't quite work out. It was only after knitting and ripping the bloody thing four times that I finally got it working--and realized the design didn't suit me at all.

Not wanting to waste all the effort, I ripped back to the yoke. There was no way I was going to rip that sucker out after knitting it four times, so I thought I'd just wing it and come up with something on the fly. In the car. On winding, icy mountain roads. With the kids and the dog in the back and my husband demonstrating his winter driving skills with great enthusiasm and little concern for my utter lack of interest in seeing how neatly he could pull out of a slide or my complete devotion to reciting every prayer I'd ever heard while keeping the car on the road by sheer force of will.

Needless to say, I was less than pleased with the result of my design efforts.

When we got home (in one piece, praise all gods that be), I tried it on and then promptly stuffed it behind the sofa in utter disgust, where it has remained, awaiting frogging, ever since.

And then, in my post-Dickinson project clean up, I came across it again. I pulled it out to frog and it occurred to me that it wasn't as ugly as I remembered. And the yarn was soft and pretty. So I tried it on again. Not one of my better works, certainly, but not--I thought--beyond hope. It did fit pretty well. A little modification to the body, maybe. A couple more inches of length. Maybe some sleeves, and one of those left-over buttons from the CPH...

And you know, I think I like it!

The details:
Pattern: Mine, mostly
Yarn: RYC Soft Tweed, 7 balls in Sprig
Needles: Oh, maybe a 10 1/2. Knit Picks Options circular

Unlaced, Part II

The answer to lace knitting frustration: 21 inches of 2x2 ribbing.

Unlaced

I think it may be time to own up to the fact that I'm just not a lace knitter.

Yes, lace is gorgeous. Yes, I drool over everyone else's amazing lace shawls (I'm looking at you, FairyGodKnitter). Yes, I love silky, perfect laceweight yarn, and the fact that you can knit a whole project in really awesome yarn for thirty bucks or less. In fact, I love everything about lace knitting...

...right up until I cast on.

I mean, literally, until I cast on. Because the cast on alone makes my head pound. It doesn't matter if you start with 3 stitches or 3000. Casting on with laceweight is no fun. The yarn is so skimpy and light, I feel like I'm wearing clown gloves and manipulating dental floss with toothpicks. And it pretty much goes downhill from there. I don't seem to have the necessary attention span to deal with lace patterns. I've tried line-by-line instructions and charted instructions. I've tried writing each line on its own index card and using a clever little magnet board to mark the rows on the chart. I've tried row counters and stitch counters. I've marked each repeat with its own stitch marker and recited "ssk, yarn over, knit one, yarn over, knit two together" until I can do it in my sleep.

And still, ten minutes in, I realize my brain has checked out and my hands have gone off on their own tangent, and whatever I have on my needles, it bears no resemblance to the pattern. And then I start to wonder--after about the tenth time I've tinked back the second row--why I'm even bothering. It's not like I know what to do with a lace project anyway. I've never worn a shawl in my life. Not once. I'm not even sure how to put one on, or where I'd wear it. Seeing as how my everyday wardrobe consists entirely of yoga pants and t-shirts (for summer) and sweatpants and turtlenecks (for winter), it's hard to imagine an outfit of mine that would benefit from the addition of a lace shawl. (We'll just leave the issue of the state of my wardrobe for another day, shall we?)

Yeah, I've done some lace sweaters. They are more wearable, and are often worked in heavier weight yarns, which is a plus in my book. But there's still the matter of the instructions. And my lack of attention span. And the snail-like pace at which I work lace patterns. Like this, for instance.

I cast this on four days ago. This is the sum total of my progress. Twelve rows. In four days. I took it to my son's football practice. I spent two hours on it and got half a row done. I knitted the row about 12 times. And un-knitted it the same twelve times. I was sitting with another mom. I can't talk and knit lace at the same time. I worked on it while watching "So You Think You Can Dance", which I have come to privately think of as "So You Think You Can Knit." I can't. At least, I can't knit lace while watching tv. I worked on it while supervising my son's homework. We were both exasperated by the end of that session. In order to successfully knit lace, I seem to need complete silence with no distractions of any kind. Which happens about as often around here as winning the lottery. Less often, actually. My husband did once win 1500 bucks in the lottery.

So I'm in a bit of a quandry. I do love this sweater, in the sense that I want to own it. I do not love this sweater in the sense that I am enjoying knitting it. In fact, I am fantasizing about working a garter stitch afghan in bulky acrylic, which may indicate how much I'm not liking working this lace pattern on size 5 needles.

I'm not one to abandon a project lightly. I feel a sense of obligation to the project once I've cast it on. Abandoning it is almost like taking a pet to the pound. Well, okay, maybe not that bad, but you get the point. Still, the purpose of knitting for me--for most of us--is enjoyment. And I am not enjoying making this sweater, although I do want to finish it so that I can wear it.

So the question is, what to do? What do you do when you're not enjoying a project? Finish it for the sake of finishing it? Finish it so you can wear it? Stuff it in the back of the stash closest until you forget all about it? Or rip that sucker and move on?

Arachnophobia

Spiders and I have a troubled relationship. Way back in the recesses of my memory, I seem to recall a time when an elementary school class I was in had a pet tarantula. I even vaguely recall handling and petting this creature, and thinking it was "neat".

Somewhere along the way, though, the relationship went south.

It could have been that time I awoke with one skittering across my face and, in an excess of enthusiasm, smushed it into my hair. Or possibly the time I woke up thirsty and sleepily took a big swig of water from the glass beside the bed, only to come fully and unpleasantly awake when I remembered that water doesn't have legs. (There was the moment of horrified clarity when I realized it would be faster to swallow the wiggling thing than to run to the bathroom to spit it out. Only later did it occur to me that I could have spit it back into the cup. By then, the damage was done.)

As a gardener, I am forced to acknowledge that spiders number among our friends in the bug world, unlike, say, cockroaches or termites. They live in my garden in vast numbers and eat the bugs that would otherwise be eating my prized plants. They spin beautiful webs, and I appreciate beautiful spinning, whether accomplished with two legs or eight. And truly, with limited exceptions, they are harmless little creatures.

As long as they stay in the garden. If they come in the house, all bets are off. I like to think that we have an understanding here.

But there is a grey area in our uneasy truce, and that is the topic of this post. You see, we have spiders around here that have an absolutely remarkable talent. They can spin enormous, fully-evolved webs in midair. I kid you not. Huge things, right in the middle of the street, without a tree or an overhang in sight. During the day, this is not such a problem. Most spiders close up shop during the daytime, preferring to laze away the heat of the day in whatever cool and shady spot they call home. But at night--ah, at night, the spiders come out to play.

And therein lies the problem.

Almost every night in the summertime, after dinner and dishes and homework and showers and reading and lights out, I walk the dog. This is the only time of the day when it is cool enough to walk and when my time is not otherwise occupied with the evening rituals of a young family or with sleeping.

This also seems to be prime hunting time for the spiders. At least twice a week, despite keeping a careful lookout for spider webs, I walk through one of these mysteries of the natural world--a spiderweb magically suspended in midair. Most of the time, the web is unoccupied when I crash through it, the occupant perhaps having been warned of the impending destruction of its impressive hunting grounds by the noisy, panting approach of a 110 pound dog on a forced march in a full fur coat. Whatever the reason, I am supremely grateful.

Not that my reaction to an empty web is exactly a model of restraint and decorum. The dancing and screaming and thrashing must be quite impressive, actually, judging from the way the cars slow down to watch. Because, you know, you can never really be sure that the web IS empty. There are all those wispy bits of web, sticking and tickling and itching...and all you can really do is thrash around, trying to brush off whatever sticks or tickles or itches as quickly as humanly possible before it bites you or gets into your underwear, please God!

But once in a while, there is genuine reason for all that dancing and screaming and thrashing. Once in a while, there is a confirmed occupied web. Like tonight.

Tonight I was walking the dog after dark, as is my wont, keeping my usual eye out for spiderwebs, and mostly just minding my own business, when it happened. I walked full-on into a bloody HUGE spiderweb. This sucker went from my upper chest down to my ankles, and at least from one side of me to the other--which I know, because I was wearing a v-neck shirt and capri yoga pants, and both my neck and ankles, as well as both arms, were instantly wrapped in sticky web. And it was thick. It made a noise when I walked through it! And just as I started my usual dance-and-scream-and-thrash routine to get the web off, I felt the spider racing down my back under my shirt, heading straight for the promised land under the waist band of my pants!

You cannot imagine the chaos that ensued. I'm pretty sure I did a damned good impression of a woman possessed. Because not only was the web occupied, not only did the spider actually seek refuge inside my clothes, but it was a BIG spider! I could feel its individual feet racing along my bare skin. It probably left marks. It was the King Kong of spiders, and I was not at all happy to have in on my body.

The dog, as usual, was no help. She took advantage of the break in our brisk pace to lie down on the cool concrete and have a little rest. She is a Newfoundland. She is stoic.

I eventually did get the spider out of my shirt, you will all be happy to know, although not without probably breaking some indecency laws. I also managed to scrape off most of the spider web on the way home, although I had to stop periodically to thrash around a bit more, feeling phantom spider tracks running across my skin.

After all that trauma, I'm feeling the need to curl up with some yarn and soothe my battered soul. But first, I need a shower. A long, hot shower. And there'd better not be any spiders in the bathroom.

In Search of a Cure

I have a brand new knitting disease. It's so rare, there is no known treatment or therapy. There isn't even an official name. The good ones, like startitis and second sock syndrome are already taken anyway. You all can tell me what you think it should be called. The symptoms are a complete inability to get around to taking photos and blogging about FO's. I don't have any trouble with project monogamy and there isn't a UFO in the place (in fact, if you look closely at the picture below, you will see that I have finished my new Noro jacket--in less than a week). But there are six FO's waiting for photographs and blog posts! Six! And I'm not talking dishcloths. I mean full-on sweaters! Don't believe me? Look here:

All of these have been finished in the past couple of months and not one of them has even been photographed properly, much less blogged. I laid them all out on the bed this morning so that I would have to deal with them today. I even made arrangements with the resident FOtographer to take modeled shots this morning. But the phone kept ringing and there was lunch to be had and laundry to do and work to handle...and now the FOtographer is on his way out the door, not to return until after dark. I'm starting to worry that my neglected FO's are going to develop insecurity issues. Doesn't she like us? Is there something wrong with us? Aren't we good enough?

So to deal with my mounting guilt, I did this:

Yup. Cast on for another sweater. 'Cause there is no problem so bad that it can't be made worse with wretched excess. This will be a lace-ish cardigan, ala this pattern. I started with it, but I'm using a different gauge, and I wanted to knit it in the round, and I didn't like the way the lace pattern in the original didn't match up at the sides, and I want mine to fit differently, so...you know. I've got 207 stitches on size five circs. This will probably take a little longer than the bulky Noro jacket. Maybe that'll give me time to deal with my new disease. Hey! I know! It's (wait for it...) a FObia!

No Signal

Sorry. No time to post. My new scooter is here! Goin' ridin'....