Enchanting Juno

Why learn something once when you can do it three or four times?

So over the weekend I finished the back of my new friend Josephine.  Plus I ripped out the sleeve and re-knit it.

See, I knit it as written on 7mm needles.  It was too short and and the super bulky two by two ribbing was a bit unpliable.  The short was my fault - a little arithmetic ought to have showed me that I needed a few more inches.  But do I listen to the inside of my head?  I do not.

We've been having an ongoing discussion in my knitting class about this - the teacher is European and most of the women in the group learned to knit from her.  It has kind of always fascinated me that they tend to stick to translated Filati and Rebecca Patterns and special order Lana Grossa yarns (getting harder to find) rather than exploring the full range of British and North American yarns and patterns that are available here.  I am usually doing something quite different than the rest of the group and I had a very hard time getting my head around the Knit Goddess's gauge when I first joined them.  She often knits cables in a loose way that seemed so peculiar to me, but her sweaters looked great.  I filed this away in my head but didn't do much with the information

When I fell in love with the Josephine pattern I tried to find a local substitute with a similar cashmere content, because, hello, giant cozy cashmere sweater = GOOD.  Everything I tried was too heavy, too dense and I abandoned the project.  Recently it crossed my mind again - Ravelry I expect - and I googled the pattern yarn.  Adriafil has begun doing international sales through their website and so I ordered a box load in burst of Devil-may-care insouciance (I've been in a tricky mood for a month or so and a big box of yarn is my favorite cure for that).

I love the yarn, and noticed that in construction it reminded my of my friends' favorite Lana Grossa yarns.  Intriguing.

Using the Claudia method I knit a sleeve/swatch.  And as I said, I thought it was a little too stiff to be flattering.  Since this is a long cardigan I want to make sure that it has some suppleness to it, and is generous rather than snug on my curvy bits.  I got pattern gauge for the cables on the designated 7.5 mm needle, but looking at at that sleeve worried me and on impulse I went up to 8mm for the back.  The result is perfect.  The spin of the yarn and the nylon content give it a light weight and a lot of bounce so it holds is shape beautifully, and the looser gauge makes it fluid and wearable.

I'm used to the idea of knitting at a tight gauge and blocking to size, that you can give your fabric drape with this kind of finishing, but it isn't really as simple as that.   This yarn is wrecked by hard blocking - ask me how I know.  This yarn - and many others from brands like Lana Gosssa and Phildar - tend to be more engineered.  Not in the sense that novelty yarn is engineered, but designed and spun to be fashion forward garments, wearable and faster to knit.  They are further away from the sheep, if that makes sense.  It isn't strictly a European vs. British line of decent, though I think you can draw some broad categories that way.

I think I've had a lesson on listening to my materials rather than my preconceived ideas.   

Because that sleeve?  Was too small.  Following what I 'know' to be 'correct,' I wet it and blocked it to make it more fluid, causing it to collapse, going a bit sad and flat.  I knew it needed to be redone, but I was too lazy to wash the stitch curls out of it, just reknit from one end of the sleeve on one size large needles.  If I was using Beaverslide worsted this would be dandy, any quirks of stitch fine tunable with a good block.  But I am not using Beaverslide worsted, or handspun, or anything made in a more traditional fashion, am I?

It looked like ass.  So I....got it wet and laid it flat to help those stitches relax. 

It worked about as well as you might expect. 

All I could talk about last night was how crap it was, as I knit along on the second sleeve - on the bigger needles, in un-meddled with yarn, all springy and beautiful.  Finally I faced the fact that I would be knitting four sleeves for this sweater and pulled it out.  For the second time.
The yarn has been soaked AGAIN and is hanging in the bathroom in skeins, hopefully recovering some of its get up and go.  Maybe I have enough yarn that this can be used for the belt or something.  I'd feel pretty stupid if I had to order four more skeins from Italy because of my own idiocy.

On the upside I have really worked the kinks out of increasing in 2X2 rib.

I think it's a good lesson though - not to let my own assumptions get in the way and remember that all yarns are not the same.  Something like Bingo or Charme or Aurora 8 may benefit a great deal from NOT being blocked, in fact blocking may cause it to lose elasticity and even shorten its life.  A more relaxed gauge might make it bounce and bloom instead of flop and sag.  Just as Scottish Tweed or Jameisons or Beaverslide may thrive on wicked tight tension and firm discipline. 

Pictures when I have recovered from last night's destruction.

Celebrate with cashmere.

That's my motto.  Although recently I have been obsessed with yak merino.  What are the chances of getting Karabella to produce Superyak in a DK?  I like color 10401, if anyone has any influence.

I was exhausted Monday - only had one bottle of diet coke ALL DAY, and by 5 I was practically asleep.  But it was knitting night, and missing that is hardly the best idea if I am trying to improve my mood, so I drank some mint water (which is very nice but hardly the drug of choice), ate my dinner, pulled up my metaphorical socks and left the house.

It was a good idea.  I love these women, I do. 

We all pull out our projects and notice that we all feel about the same - like a truck has hit us - and then K looks at me and demands to know "what has happened to you!"

As I am in the middle of squeezing my head between my palms (this isn't just me, right?), I drop my hands, look startled and ask "I don't look THAT bad?"  But she's looking at my knitting.

What's wrong with it?  Well, OK, the last time she saw me (a week ago) I had 6 swatches and no decisions.  And now I have - cough - a sleeve and half a back of something completely different.  But really.  It's very bulky.  I swear.

She wants to know if this means I'm getting over my commitment problems. 

I don't know WHAT she's talking about, do you?

She wants to know when I started it. Well...Thursday night.

(Not much of a picture, sorry.  Didn't get home till way after dark.)

The key to this is 50% nylon.  Ordinarily, not a fan of the man made yarn material, but they key to this pattern is reducing yarn weight.  I was obsessed with this sweater the first time I saw it, and spent a lot of time swatching alternatives to a yarn I could not find anywhere.  Nothing was right.  Too dense and heavy and not fun.

I'm doing the whole thing a needle size up to give this giant yarn a little pliability.  This is wonderful, multistrand, bouncy European yarn, so I think it can take it without losing its shape.   

Hey, yesterday was my 3rd blogiversary.  I am not sure I had any thoughts about the future of this activity when I started off, but I'm a bit surprised to find myself still here 1096 days later.  Thank you all for reading and commenting and playing along at home.  You add a nice dimension to my life and I really appreciate it.

Check your wallets.

The oddest thing happened Friday.  A call from the bank to verify a transaction.

A contribution of 1 dollar to the Islamic Friendship Society.  On my debit card.

Not my contribution.

The bank spotted it as an atypical transaction and froze the card, so no harm done.  But freaky.  Apparently when someone gains access to a card number they often do a trial transaction to see if anyone is paying attention.  No idea how the number was obtained - with the international yarn commerce and ebay and etsy and Amazon and paypal and all, I use on line shopping a LOT and it must have been something in there.  But no idea what or where. 

I have this idea that maybe once a year I should call my bank and credit card companies and get them to issue new numbers on my accounts.   And maybe for online things I ought to designate ONE card NOT linked to my checking account that I keep a very close track of, and maybe chill with the online shopping in general.  It certainly wouldn't hurt me to save rather than spend for a while.  The stash is splendid and would carry me through a period of non-acquisition.

And then on Saturday I forgot I was debit-cardless and spend my last cash-in-hand on Harry Potter and some wiper fluid for the car and was left to face the weekend with only ONE DIET COKE.  Fortunately, on Sunday I found 10 bucks in the bottom of my purse, otherwise the biologic longing for aspartame might have finished me off. 
Can anyone recommend any way to wean oneself off the artificial sweetener without the crushing headache and the jitters?  Because more and more, I think the diet coke is probably worse than the smokes.  This stuff is not right.  And really, I quit smoking, I can do hard things, but I can't seem to quit diet soda.  I used to think it was the caffeine - except the last time I tried to stop I discovered that Fresca satisfied the craving.  Not caffeine, aspartame.
Anyone done this? Can you tell me how long it takes for the peculiar longing and the spiky headache to subside?

So it was a quiet weekend.  While tidying, I found some more yarn lying about the place - it's everywhere.  Read Harry Potter, watched Firefly on DVD (how did I miss this the first time around?  Fantastic.), knit quite a bit.  Did the dishes.  Dazzling, huh?
It has been a number of quiet weekends in a row for me and I am starting to realize I am a bit depressed, not just in a bad mood.
I think I have to admit I want certain things in my life to change and it will take not introspection, not therapy, not self assessment, but actual slog with work and home  over many months to make it happen.  Actual slog that will seriously cut into my recreational activities.   I hate that.
I am so spoiled I make myself a little nauseated, really.   You mean, I have to stop playing and WORK for the future I want? 

Isn't it funny how everything seems to end up being about self knowledge?

It must be a perspective thing.

In the past few months I've begun reading sewing blogs and thinking about clothing construction.  I bought a basic sewing machine and serger and somehow, a small fabric warehouse has come to inhabit my living room.  One chair is lost to me, lost behind a wall of jersey.

But I haven't touched any of it.

It is most peculiar.  With knitting I buy yarn I am not ready to use when I love it, calm with the idea that I will get to it someday.  I am never afraid of it.  I have sold off my mistakes and have now a collection of raw material that suits the kind of garments I am likely to wear, and my taste in fiber.  I have a reasonably solid idea of my sweater wearing persona, though there will be aberrations based on things I just want to knit.  It is good.  I'm happy with it.

The fabric started because of my constant no-commercial shirt lament.  I was going to learn how to make shirts that fit me.  Very simple.  Not a problem.  Totally manageable new hobby. 
And then I started to look around and remembered that I love dresses, but never wear them because of the 4 inches too short through the torso problem that plagues my shirt buying adventures.  A lot of my clothing is dictated by what I can cover myself with, though years of collecting and fine tuning have left the collection more personal than mere chance.  I admit the closet has its fair share of almost-successful items.
When I look at the fabric pile I can see that its a wee bit bi-polar.  The lower strata adhere to the perfect fitting t-shirt quest that I began with. But the later epochs stray in to fantasy lives I may not be living.  Fabric is as seductive as yarn, no doubt, but the real question seems to me to be "do I want to live them?"

I followed a link today to an interview with Tim Gunn.  Project Runway is something I came to very late, but I have fallen wholly in love with.  The psychotic balance of business and creativity is awfully compelling viewing and it's hard not to love the elegant Tim, with his eye and his unjaded candor.  In the interview he said - of the unsuccessful contenders for season 4 - that there were many who made beautiful things but had no larger ideas about what they building. He said "I see clothes, I don’t see fashion."

It just stopped me in my tracks.  I don't think of myself as fashion driven.  Interested in appearance, yes, but fashion?  I am more likely to think that's a shallow word.  A dirty one.  The industry of clothing manufacture is cruel and has not served me well.  From the way most of the women I know talk, this is not a unique experience.  And yet my primary hobby is making knitted clothing, and talking about it.

My job is extremely casual - I wear jeans and t-shirts 90 percent of the time.  One day last week I wore a knit black pencil skirt and camisole with a coral cotton cardigan instead, as I had somewhere to go after where I needed to look presentable.  I looked great.  I felt great.  I felt like myself, too.  I don't always.
I thought, I should dress like this all the time.

I buy clothes to cover myself.  I buy yarn becasue I love textiles and knitting.  As a knitter I have struggled with making the kinds of things I am likely to wear vs. the things I am likely to enjoy knitting.  I've been buying fabric to feed some kind of fantasy, or several, one of them being that I buy clothes - or make them - because I love textiles and wearing them.

I keep hearing those words in my head "‘I see clothes, I don’t see fashion."  And where I have thought of fashion as gimmickry in the past, I think I am seeing it more as a philosophy of style.  Whatever that means to the individual.

I have a sudden urge to clean out my closet and be not afraid of the sewing machine any more.

Oh, and I started a new sweater.  None of the above, pretty much.  I am not sure where it fits into this new idea.  We'll see.






   

First Date.

That's what a swatch is.  A first date with your yarn. 

I've been dating a LOT.

I'm kind of at a loss right now - I want to knit something that is challenging enough to be interesting, simple enough to be soothing, a pleasure to work with, and wearable in the end. 

If I could find my copy of the Natural Knitter, I could cast on for the Gauntlet Mittens and learn colorwork.  Or play catch up on the mystery shawl.  Or Moth maybe - I love that pattern.  Never found the right yarn though.  Hmmm.  My hands have been sore, I could work on my long neglected red cardigan - the Bingo is a very hand friendly yarn.

I think I want to fall in love with my knitting.  Really passionately in love.  Instead of looking at it on our second date and going "Eh.  Not smart enough to sleep with" and ripping out to begin again with something new.

I dunno.  That Autumn cashmere is really lovely - I skeined up one of the cones and washed it like I would wash handspun - brutally.  I used bio-kleen laundry detergent to get the oil out and a plunger and everything.  We'll see how it dries.

And that brown merino/cashmere?  Not softening like I hoped.  Washed the swatch in a load of laundry and it is better, if a tad felty....but I'm thinking about winding off a skein and trying the same sink wash on the yarn.   No ends to  weave in is nice, but not if it means I have to knit with acid-harsh string.  Anyway, I tried on the recent finished pullover the other day and realized something - if you knit seamlessly and use a spit join?  Your sweater is reversible.  No ends.   I  tell you, I felt pretty clever when I realized the inside was as pretty as the out.  Maybe prettier, as the purl bumps catch the light rather fetchingly.

Thoughts on the best methods for removing machine oil from coned yarn welcome.

This is the Cashsoft DK on a 4 mm needle.  Someone asked in the comments how it was holding up - here it is after 5 days in the outside pocket of my purse (cell phone, eye drops and keys).  Slightly creased and a bit linty, but fine.  Clearly it will halo with wear, but held up admirably.

the embarrassment of riches.

I can't make up my mind.  I know one thing, which is that stockinette is a no.  Except all the yarns I seem drawn to are ones that are meant to be really plain little sweaters.  And really, I just want something interesting enough to amuse me past the first infatuation.

See, I finished something.  And instead of finishing something else in progress, all I want is something new and soft and shiny.  Well, not actually shiny.  But cashmere-y and elastic and easy on the hands and a pure pleasure to work with and touch.  That kind of shiny.

This blue pullover is done but for two ends at the collar.  I tried it on when I finished and suddenly 'snug' seemed 'tight' - I have been trying on as I went along and it needed a block but was otherwise acceptable, but the collar kind of pulled everything up and suddenly I felt like a sausage.  So I soaked it and laid it flat and measured the bust.  20 inches from armpit to armpit.  Um,  one of these things is not like the other......

I swear to you, it has been fine all along.  Hell, it used to be 6-8 inches bigger and I ripped back because it was vast around the underarms.

So I pinned it out to a bust circumference more closely matching my own and it is drying.  We shall see.

And while it dried, I looked at patterns. All of them.  These are the contenders.

For a minute I wanted to cast on for St. Brigid, which is possibly, arguably, the most beautiful sweater design ever.  But that would require yarn I do not already have and also, I'd have to redesign it for set in sleeves.  And then it wouldn't be St. Brigid. 

So, no.  Instead I made some swatches.

Both cashmere merino, oddly enough.  Not shown is the RYC Cashsoft DK swatch that's been floating in my purse all weekend (what better place to check the resilience of something? Have you seen what happens to anything you put down there?).  It is holding up really rather well, if anyone is curious.

This one says we'd both be happier if I'd stop with all the yarn and pet her.  And also, put down the camera, we hates the flash.

In between swatches, I spun two bobbins of this Shetland from last spring.  And another bobbin of the iron rust rambouillet/llama blend. 

The more I use the Suzie the more I think she is one of the most undervalued, versatile, purely useful tools around. Spin anything, ply everything and sit neatly in 1 square foot of floor when not on call.  I want the skeinwinder attachment soon.  And the replacement flyer with the traditional orifice.  And maybe a selection of different bobbins.  And though I already have the accelerator head, I hear it is being discontinued.  Maybe I need a back up?

More swatching.  There was some action with the cone on the right, behind Fiona Ellis, but really, always remember to check the needle size before you swatch.  Just because you think the needle in your hand is a 4 mm, does not mean it actually is.

I also cleaned the living room. 

If I have to sit on you to make you stop, I will.

So far this is the winner, for its 4mm needle-ness and its fiddly not memorizable-ness.  20 more rows before the repeat is finished though, hard to tell. 

I love 4 mm needles.  More and more, it occurs to be I ought to only work with sport and dk yarn - 2 to 4 mm needles are much easier on my wrists than larger ones.  And even though there are more stitches, the knitting seems faster, or easier, or better.  Something.

I don't suppose anyone would care to persuade Jo Sharp to make her Silkroad Aran in DK (not the tweed, I know about the tweed)?  That would be a considerable inducement.

No cashmere in it though.  30 cotton.  70 percent wool.  And look....pink.  That's a change.

N is for Neville

It seems to me that there is a kind of galloping ennui pervading this little community.  Posting - not just mine - has been slow for a month or so, and everyone seems a bit limp.  Depleted.  I have been blaming the weather, except for the fact that while it is brutally hot, I don't believe it is really any hotter than any other mid-Atlantic summer I have lived.  And considerably less humid than memory tells me it was in the old days.

Someone told me a few days ago that it was because mercury was out of retrograde.  I was like, wait...isn't it supposed to be the other way around?  Uh huh.  It seems that the increased potential energy of a world out of retrograde is upsetting people - they're scared of possibility.  I would make fun of this except that possibility is a very normal thing to be scared of.  Very human.  Stupid, chickenshit...but human.

This same friend confessed that she has been suffering a sense of impending doom herself, and finds herself checking her email all the time waiting for...something.

I laughed and laughed and laughed....because I have been doing the same thing for several months.  I open my email box and no matter what is in there - 50 messages or none - I am disappointed.  Because I am expecting something and it isn't there and I have not the smallest idea what it is that I am waiting for.  And I really would like to know when I decided my email box was the oracle that would provide me with an Answer?  It is, if I understand correctly, a means of communication not the I-Ching.  (Though it would be pretty amusing if it turned out there was a secret subtext to the penis enhancement ads).

Dr. Who is back, which is very nice.  I can - and have - watch David Tennant be the doctor for an infinite number of hours.  I'm a very tiny bit embarrassed by how closely BBC Wales has captured my sexual ideal (I do so hate to be a cliche). Though, as my friend P pointed out when I asked him to please pack Mr. Tennant in a to go bag for me, should he happen upon him, he's pretty sure there's a waiting list for that.  So I am not alone.  I can't decide if that makes the mortification sting more or less.

I hadn't turned the a/c on until the night before last - fear of the power bill had me claiming comfort well past the point of believability - but I haven't been sleeping well and the change since I dropped the indoor temperature forces me to admit that it may have been heat related.  Oddly, I was knitting more before I cooled things off.   The blue pullover is done but for the neckband - it took me abut 4 hours to pick up and knit three rounds last night.

I did do some spinning. 

I've been working on these for WEEKS.  Camel Tussah in Fiddlehead from Foxfire.  This is a deliberate attempt on my part to spin with less twist in order to have a three-ply that is a leeeetle less firm.  The third bobbin represents a real failure of will.  It is significantly less good than the other two; as gorgeous as this stuff is, it would not be my recommended fiber for spinning in an 80 degree room in July.  Too fluffy and sticky and fine.   I kind of gave up on consistency a bit to just finish it already.  When I switched to some Shetland I carded up from fleece last spring I enjoyed myself much more and my spinning sucked way less.  Will ply when the third bobbin had a chance to go as limp as the first two.  Despite it all, I expect the resulting yarn to be rather nice.  I'm thinking a slouchy beret hat thing.

I found this in my change the other day.  1915 dime.  Pleasantly worn from nearly 100 years of handling.  It has given me rather a lot of pleasure these past few days to contemplate its adventures and the wonderful tactile smoothness of the old worn silver.

 

 

 

I want my 2 dollars.

I got a parking ticket this morning, which infuriates me to a degree that I have a hard time defending, seeing as how I was parked illegally.  I mean, it had only been illegal for 6 minutes and I was walking toward the car with the clear intent to leave when the dude wrote it up.  And he is a little miserable old man who had pulled his parking enforcement vehicle in front of my car at a dramatic angle to prevent my escape.  But still. 

This is a complex emotional state to inhabit and I am grouchy about it.  Too early for this kind of multi dimensional feeling, when one is still in "go, car, work now. morning sad" mode.

In the past we've always had parking enforcement that seemed to understand the limitations of the neighborhood - waiting at the bottom of the street until 10 past, because they know that most people are just running a bit late, agreeing (by not ticketing) that when you have squeezed 51% of your vehicle in front of the sign, that that is a good faith attempt to find a legal spot.  Ignoring overnight parking that was outside the bounds.  Letting us be on weekends.  But this guy?  No.  He's a strict constitutionalist when it comes to the limits of parking regulation.  He comes by at 6:30 in the morning to find anyone who made their own space overnight.  He comes back at 8:03 to get anyone running late.  I've seen him ticket a car with just a whisper of bumper hanging past the sign. 

He's a vicious petty man. 

The thing that kills me is that he's not doing anything wrong, but in so doing he has changed the feel of the neighborhood quite a bit.  In the past it felt like we were all in this together trying to make a tight parking situation livable, and now it feels like there are sides.  It is the decay of civility.  Or something.

Plus it has cost me about 300 bucks over the last few months. 

If I told you what I wanted to happen to him you'd be shocked.  I'm a little shocked myself. 

The things we carry.

Did I ever tell you about this one?  I bought the yarn using a birthday 10% off coupon at a local store.  In 2004.  It's South West Trading Company Phoenix, and it looks and feels like a soy shoelace.  Which sounds bad, but really isn't. 

I loved the color.  Love the color.  I was a brand spanking new knitter and I bought the Rowan Summer Tweed book and fell in love with the tank pattern called Rosemary.  (At this time in my life I did not go sleeveless in public, so I am not sure how this love came to be.  Perhaps I was beginning to be tired of self consciousness?)   But Summer Tweed I did not like the look of.  And Rowan stops their sizing at about 40 inches anyway, so I knew I would be re figuring and why not redo the gauge as long as I was tinkering?  Just look at the pretty blue and brown.

I was new.  New enough that I was unclear on ease.  Somewhere I read that you should allow 2-4 inches of ease.  I chose 4, as I am a big girl and I thought it was better for something to skim, rather than hug, the curves.  I made a swatch, even.  I did not notice the way the swatch relaxed into this lovely, thin, heavy thing.  I knit.  And knit, and knit.  Each skein has 175 yards.  I used every bit of the six I had and went back for the other four on the shelf.  I knit some more.

(While I still don't like Summer Tweed, this is actually a pattern with some thoughtful detail - a clever slipped stitch edge and well thought out shaping.  I might curse the name of Rowan, but I must do so fairly.)

It went on forever.  I bought my first addi turbos to move things along.  And one weekend I sat down - this was just before the blog, and I wanted to wear it that summer - and made myself finish.  This was clearly before wrist surgery.  The thought of knitting this yarn at this gauge on that needle now makes my wrist throb a little.

I washed.  I blocked.  I sewed up the sides and one shoulder - harvesting from the swatch to do so, because I had used every last scrap of my 1750 yards of worsted yarn.  I tried it on before I finished seaming, just to see.  Then I took it off.  I folded it up.  I put it in the closet.

And there it stayed.  Like this.

There's a lot of sweater in that pile, considering it is a tank, don't you think?  The v-neck stretched to below my bra, the hem to mid thigh.  It was vast.  Like a sail.  Like a Christo installation.  A trapezoidal Christo Installation.

When a friend visited for the first time - you know how you tour the stash with wool friends, right?  - she picked up the front (I had unpicked the side seams at some point).  Looked at me.  Looked at it.  Looked at me.  What is this?

Fuckin' Rowan, I replied with some bitterness.

And we howled.  It was Rowan's fault.  Right.  When we could breathe again she asked me - not for the last time - exactly how big I thought I was anyway?

For three years it sat, mocking me silently.  This weekend I struck back.

I still love the yarn though.  Maybe a shawl?

This, by the way, is how a sweater is supposed to fit:

At long last, a picture of Matilda Jane. The auto focus and I were having a disagreement.  But I think you can see well enough.

There was some construction to balance the destruction too.  A yin/yang of creation, if you will.

I'm not binding off the sleeve until I finish the neckline, get the length just right.  It looks good.  It fits like Matilda Jane.  There may be a connection here.

This is a bulky yarn knit to a worsted gauge (not something I would ordinarily recommend, but this is an odd yarn).  I bought either 14 or 15 balls and I will have one left over.  Maybe a bit more.  This is a hip length sweater with sleeves to the middle of my hand.   Using 1200 yards +/-.  MJ used about 1350 yards of DK.
The answer to the question is "a lot bigger than I really am."  Seriously.

This made me laugh.  I groomed the stuffing out of her this weekend.  I think I went one comb too far.  Either that or I just finally took the damn yarn out of her basket. 

 

 

 

 

 

apathy smapathy

I have had ennui.  It maybe showed?

But I have been to the gymnasium, which always helps, and I have eaten spinach, ditto. 

And though I have not done a little dance, nor in fact, made a little love, I did indeed get down last night.

The sweater A l'Orange is no more.  But I still love the yarn.  So it is enjoying a refreshing swim.  We will see if it recovers.

The Jo Sharp Desert Garden Sarong that has been on hiatus since July of of 2004?
Gone, gone, gone.

This one I never liked - the color, while pretty, was not what I wanted.  I wanted dandelion, or parakeet, not garnet.  Anyone want it?  8 untouched balls, plus at least 8 in this giant recovered skein.  There's also a little handful of 12 or 14 inch bits that were going to be the fringe - since this was loosely knit I changed balls at the edge and trimmed the fringe-useful lengths as I went.  If you're interested, I'll weigh the lot and guesstimate the yardage.  First comment to claim it gets it.  I'll even pay the shipping, that's how happy I am to have this out of my house. (It was about a month from becoming a great and terrible new god of retribution.) (Reference?  Anyone?)

I feel better already.  (I still need to finish something before beginning something else, but that final sleeve is looking totally manageable right now. And then?  Cables.  I'm thinking cables.)