I must confess something: I haven't been knitting as much lately as I generally do. This may surprise some of you, but I have good reasons, and I think that I'm starting to get back into things. For starters it's been really rather warm around here for a while, and I haven't really wanted to get under a warm sweater, and I've failed at a lot of attempts to start new and projects. Also--and this is my own damn fault--but I have failed in my usual good practice of knitting sleeves efficiently: I'm something like 5 sleeves short of three new sweaters.
But the weather has, I think officially broken, and I've figured out how/what to do for my next sweater projects. I've also made some peace with my sleeve issue.
Part of the sleeve problem is that I knit two plain (all stocking stitch) sweaters in quick succession, in part because I wanted to have an easy "demo" sweater to work on at camp, and in part because I was eating through some yarn that had been in the stash too long. End result: four plain (boring) sleeves. I knit one of these sleeves without much fuss, but most of my plain knitting this summer has been focused on sock knitting, and they're heavy sweaters, so I don't want them on my lap, and I'm not keen on the idea of dragging them along in my bag.
My main project this summer as been a color work sweater. I was somewhat late starting the sleeves because I was short the requisite needle, but after a false start I was off. I realized, however, that I had decreased way way way too much. Those that know me will be surprised to find that I actually ripped back several inches to see if I could fix the problem. So I started knitting this time, with a slower rate of decreases (that eventually stopped) and now while the sleeve will now fit a human wearer, it still looks a little funny. Crap. Going to have to rip that one back, but I don't have the stomach for it.
The other impediment to my knitting progress this summer, was that I started a sweater that, as it turns out, was planned for a gauge that had two more stitches per inch than reality. The sweater would have been four inches smaller than I need. So, taking this as a gauge swatch, I'm going to cast on 397 stitches, provisionally, for a sweater, inspired by one of Joyce Williams' designs in Lativan Dreams. I'm not really following Joyce's expert directions, except in the most generous of senses, but I don't think she'd expect me to.
I also, may or may not have gotten two more pounds of the nicest gray yarn you've ever seen, and I'm aching to use it, and if nothing else that will inspire someone to knit through the some of the other things in the queue.
Rather than knit a lot these last few months, I've done some good computer work and, at least as of today, I'm very close to the half way mark of my novella, and I continue to be excited about this project, so it's good to be working on it. I don't have a record of the exact start date, but I think I started around August 11th, and if I hit the half way on Saturday or Sunday, that means that I'll finish before NaNoWriMo, which I think I'm going to write a short story for this year.
Anyway. That's enough rambling for one day.
Be Well!