This Post Is Brought To You By The Words “Mittens” And “Suck”
Haven’t been blogging. Blah blah family member recovering from surgery needs lots of care no time to knit or blog etc. blah blee. (Yeah, this is not a personal blog, so I won’t go into detail.) So yeah. And now I’m behind on emails and comment replies yet again and will probably just let a few get ignored. And the promised raglan tutorial has gotten pushed aside, but it’s coming, I swear. I’m just tired and stressed and also I am hating hospitals right about now.
But I’ve finally picked up my knitting again and I will make it all up to you with…
… HORRIBLE YELLOW ACRYLIC! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!
What am I doing with horrible yellow acrylic? Evil things, no doubt? Getting ready to pair it with fun fur and create a poncho? I think the Legendary Fun Fur Poncho is at the top of my mental list of horrifying things to knit. But no, that’s not what I’m doing with horrible yellow acrylic.
I’m just playing with stitch patterns, that’s all. Perfectly innocent.
What I should be knitting is mittens, but I’m not. Instead, I’m getting ready to knit up my skein of Lady Godiva into a scarf. After my horrible yellow acrylic experiments (which look like ass, but are still enough to get the information I needed), I’ve already charted and written up most of a scarf pattern, which will be posted if it turns out well. I seem to be having good FO luck lately, so the yarn gods are on my side.
What’s that, yarn gods? No, I will not sacrifice my Lady Godiva to you. It’s mine. Go away.
Great, now they’re going to be angry and wrathful. That’s all I need.
What I really do need is mittens, but I’m procrastinating. I even found a nice simple pattern, but… I’m procrastinating. Because I’ll have to alter any nice simple pattern for my freakish long skinny hands. My cold hands that need mittens. Sigh. At 3 sts/inch I could probably finish them in a single day. How badly do I suck?
(Don’t answer that.)
What I really don’t need is a vest, but I’m working on the Back to School vest anyway.
Er, make that almost finishing the Back to School vest. That thing is a quick knit. All I have left is the neck and armhole edgings, and the happy fun time that is weaving in ends. I’d go ahead and get those done, except that I loathe picking up stitches along curved edges. The question is, is picking up those stitches preferable to making mittens? Tough call, very tough call. So much hatred, so little time…
The vest sort of fits. It also sort of doesn’t fit. It is right in that murky zone of “it fits but we’ll see what happens after a wash and a block and the added edgings ’cause it also might be too big HAHAHA SUCK ON THAT”. I don’t think the vest can talk, but “hahaha suck on that” is exactly what it would say if it could. I’m not sure what it wants me to suck, but I assume it would be speaking metaphorically anyway.
You know what would be even quicker than a vest? Mittens! I suck I suck I suck.
Brain: Haaaay. Why haven’t you made that Back to School vest from Fitted Knits yet?
Me: Because I am busy angsting over what yarn to use. Angst! Angst!
Brain: So just pick a yarn and buy it already.
Me: But but but it’s all so expensive and I’m poor.
Brain: You know, you could stop looking at yarns that a) contain high percentages of silk or b) contain the words “hand dyed” in their description?
Me: Never!
Brain: Why don’t you just use the recommended Cascade 220? You like Cascade 220. It’s pretty. It’s cheap. It’s practical. And just because your current stash of it may be cursed doesn’t mean a new stash will be.
Me: …
Brain: Ha! I win! Buy the Cascade 220 and shut the hell up!
Me: But… but… I can’t find it locally and I’ll never find the perfect shade of heathered deep brown with a reddish-plum undertone by looking at pics on the intarwebs…
Oh. How about that.
Ordering yarn online is tricky. No matter how many pictures you can dig up of the yarn in question, you’re never quite sure what it’s going to look like for reals. So it’s very satisfying to actually get it right.
And it’s very very satisfying to get it right twice.
Phear me! I will hunt down all the dark brownish-reddish-burgundyish yarn in the universe and I will buy it all! Er, assuming it’s cheap or on crazy clearance at Elann or something. Ahem.
But… I may have a problem.
Hmm, yeah, I am seeing a problem here.
I seem to have left my red-and-coral comfort zone only to plop my weary ass down in the land of reddy-plummy-brown. And it doesn’t stop with yarn. Sitting on my bed right now are a pair of pants, some pyjamas, and a purse, all in that shade of brown. On my night-table is a brown hair clip. Oh, and look over there, there’s a brown sweater with a lovely shawl collar that I need to steal for knitty purposes, and if I go to the front door there’s an adorable pair of brown mary janes that have been eating my feet a lot recently (but they’re so cuuuute), and next to them are a pair of brown slouchy boots and AHHH HELP ME IT’S TAKING OVER.
Gah. Even my nail polish matches the vest-in-progress.
Sick, sick, sick. The good news is that I’ve finally escaped from Ribbing Hell. The Back to School vest pattern seems to make a lot more sense than the Filthy Lying Tunic Of Seventeen Clothespins pattern, so there’s that. But it starts like this:
Cast on.
Purl for awhile.
Knit for awhile.
Purl for awhile.
Work 2×2 rib FOR THE REST OF ALL ETERNITY, UNTIL YOUR FINGERS BLEED AND YOUR HEAD ACHES WITH BOREDOM AND POSSIBLE BRAIN PARASITES AND, WRITHING WITH PAIN, YOU TAKE OUT A BALL OF FUCHSIA FUN FUR AND KNIT A PONCHO WITH IT FOR A CHANGE OF PACE AND THEN WEAR THE PONCHO OUT IN PUBLIC BECAUSE IT’S STILL MORE PLEASANT THAN MORE FUCKING 2X2 RIB oh okay I’ve reached 9 inches I can stop now. whew.
Now it’s time to worry about the sizing. I picked the 35.5″ size and I have a feeling I should have picked the 34″. My reasoning was that I’d be wearing it over a shirt, and I didn’t want it to stretch too much or it would do that thing where you have big white spots over your boobs where your shirt shows through a darker over-sweater. Er. Yeah. But I have a 35″ bust. So this is POSITIVE EASE. I fear positive ease. whimper
Pleasefitpleasefitpleasefit.
I don’t know about the Vest Problem, but there is a tiny ray of hope for the Brown Problem, and here it is.
That is a skein of Handmaiden Lady Godiva (…yuuuum), in, um… brown… but also! Teal! A colour that is not brown, and also is not red or coral or any sort of neutral! Yay! Rejoice! I wish I knew what colourway it was, because I want more of it. The closest I can find is Forest, but it’s greener and the brown is lighter and me no likey. Maybe it’s an especially dark and tealy dyelot of Forest. Or maybe I will never see this colourway again.
Well, I’ll just have to console myself with MORE BROWN YARN. Muhahahaha. Muhahahahahaha! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!