Alright, Infinity, Let's Talk

So, you remember those self-imposed rules I was so flamboyantly breaking? Oh. My. God.  It turns out there's a reason I make rules for myself.

I started knitting the Infinity Cardigan (knitpicks, ravelry) in June of 2013. I don't have decades of knitting experience but I have got confidence in my ability to figure things out and I'm not easily discouraged. Seriously, the defining quality of my life is accomplishment through sheer bloody-minded determination.

At the outset I was hesitant to do the two-stitch cables without a cable needle because of the twisted stitches they leave in their wake. But then the first sleeve took two months to complete. Two *months*, you guys. I have finished entire sweaters in less time that that! So my perfectionist nature is just going to have to suffer. Twisted stitches it is.

I've never worked with sock yarn before. At least not in a regular-fabric-knitting kind of way. I've done some lace knitting, so the tiny needles aren't strangers to me and the charts aren't a concern. But the sheer quantity of time required to create a thoroughly patterned fabric when working at this small scale is coming as a surprise.

Nine months later, I'm halfway through. And I don't mean nine months of slacking, either. Sure, I've got a full time job and what seems a moderate variety of other leisure time activities. But I'm enough of an introvert to enjoy frequent TV-and-knitting dates with myself and it does tend to be my default weeknight relaxation occupation. But here we are. Nine months and only half finished.

This endless tiny patterning is killing me. For whatever combination of reasons, the charts don't stick in my head. So I'm constantly checking the sheet, making sure my stitches are lining up, doing one of the cables the wrong way around and fixing it on the next row, and generally making trouble for myself. And I worry that the choice of a heathered yarn tends to obscure the pattern, so what's it all for anyway? But when I see it in a single tone yarn, while I recognize that it's beautiful and that the stitches are put to better use, I just don't want it. I love heathered yarn. In our expanded body-mod future, I will have heathered skin.

Last week I briefly considered the possibility of binding off and just wearing half a sweater. I tried it on and gazed at the result in the mirror for a while. Took it off. Put it back on again. Paced the floor. You know, the usual decision-making dance.

In retrospect of course it's obvious that the people finishing the project within the first few months were those with incredible velocity and bags of available time. There's also probably a multiplier at work where if you hit some threshold of hours per week, the chart gets into your head much earlier on and stays there more effectively, thus enhancing your progress even more. While those of us with too many other things crowding the charts out of our heads plod along wondering desperately if we'll ever see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I wasn't even supposed to be buying new yarn. There's nowhere to put it. The yarn for this project sits in its shipping box on the arm of the sofa! And it looks like it's going to stay there for the rest of the year. Oh, sweet tiny gods of knitting. Send help!

skirt wonderland: part one

Inserted even more hesitation into my winter wonderland by spending all last weekend putting zippers into two previously knitted sweaters.

I thought the one I had in my snowdrift cardigan was pulling a little oddly at the bottom edge and I hadn't paid attention to the stitching on the inside of the zipper, not having realized it would be showing any time I wore the cardigan unzipped! So I took that zipper out and replaced it with a shorter one plus a clasp. The clasp is because holy moly, that thing gets warm! As I have learned from keeping a thermometer at the office, my experience of temperature is very uneven so being able to choose between totally zipped, totally open, and clasped at the neck is very nice. I'd been simulating a cloak clasp using a little frankenstein concoction of a big beetle shaped cheap jewelry component from Michael's, some elastic cord, and a lobster necklace clasp; threading the elastic through the looser stitches of the cable area at the low front neck. With that option, I've been wearing the sweater all the freaking time so clearly a more permanent solution was in order.

The second zipper was for the B.O.B. (button on blanket) I'd made with Lorna's Laces Swirl Chunky. Despite gauge swatch indicating I shouldn't need nearly as much yarn as the pattern called for, actually ran out of yarn before even finishing the neck, never mind picking up the button bands. Emergency zipper time! Neck ended up kind of like a very low mock turtleneck? I don't know. I want to at least give it a chance, see how it wears, before taking drastic action like ripping back to the sleeve join and winging it on a new neckline arrangement.

But now I am starting to get into the lace pattern of the winter wonderland skirt. And may I just say that "ssp" is my least favorite of all the stitches? Seriously: "Holding yard in front, slip two stitches individually knitwise ... then slip these two stitches back onto the left needle (they will be turned on the needle) and purl them together through their back loops ...." The only thing worse than this is trying to do it when one of the stitches involved was one of two consecutive yarn-overs in the previous row, meaning there's nothing in particular to separate it from its other dual yarn-over half.

I don't know, crazy collar, you may not be long for this world.

Winter Wonderland: Sleeves

Winter Wonderland has two sleeves!

So I cast on for the skirt, which you may recall I have decided to do completely in the round. Like an idiot. 285 stitches, since I'll pick up button bands later. That really is quite a lot of stitches in a non-laceweight yarn. They do fit (somewhat scrunched up) on the 40" circular needle, there won't be any increases, and I'm planning a lot of games with markers but I am a bit worried about the impact of any mistakes.

In unrelated news, I have planted a bunch of bareroot ferns before all danger of frost is really past. It's a tricky balancing act between possible exposure to frost and possible rotting in the bag. I know the real answer is to stop buying bags of bareroot plants from Costco but since I love plants *and* I love Costco, that's just not a realistic scenario.

Breaking the (self-imposed) rules

You  know how it is when you are absolutely supposed to be knitting through at least some of your stash yarn so that maybe one day in the next couple of years the house can start looking like a place actual people might live ... but then a pattern shows up in your inbox and you just lost your freaking mind? Next thing you know, a box of *completely new* yarn appears on your doorstep and you're making your bewildered significant other take pictures of you wearing it?

Welcome to "Infinity Cardigan", which I will be making in tidepool heather. For Christ's sake, I'm going to use the yarn the pattern was actually written for and it wasn't even on sale. I must have some bizarre behavior-altering brain parasite. I'd better get myself checked out.  

Winter Wonderland Delayed

Seriously, I don’t know if I have ever waffled around this much trying to decide how to approach a project. I’ve been trying to get started for almost two weeks, I tell you! But which size to make (decision: a little of 36, a little of 40)? What kind of button band to use (decision: moss stitch picked up later)? Where do I want seams (decision: bodice sides and back waist, none of this awkward gore business)? Argh! At one point I hunted around the internet and ordered beads for the aeolian shawl just to feel like I was making some sort of progress on something.

Swatch (berroco ultra alpaca) on size 8 came out as 18sts, 25 rows (pattern: 16.5 sts, 24 rows).

Normally I would make the smallest size. And that makes sense for the bust even considering my gauge variance. But I tend to run into some problems when we get to the caboose so I kind of want to make the 40” skirt. And I’m really not into the way the gores look when they get seamed in on the sides but in trying to convert the skirt to one piece, I’m inclined to transform the lower part of the gores into additional pattern repeats which really only works in the 40” anyway so there you go! And let’s face it, this sucker is going to vertically stretch like madness no matter what the swatch says. Then again, I don’t really want a big old horizontal seam at the waist bulking that area up. Therefore I’m going to try to do the skirt and front bodice in one piece (w/ some joined yarn, obv.) and do the back bodice separately. That’ll get me some seams on the sides for stability and adjustments and the horizontal waist seam might be an enormous boon to allow adjustments in the back for the aforementioned caboose situation.

 I think I've got my row instructions calculated and written out for everything except the sleeves and collar. But am I ready to jump in and actually start the knitting? At this point I've been waiting so long that I might have intimidated myself out of doing anything. And given today's snowquester storm's complete failure to materialize, maybe I should take the thematic hint and just wait for next year.