So I think I'm back to being a knitter. I started a sweater last May: something fine gage, very very plain, using my "default, this sweater is awesome" pattern in my head. It has had its ups and downs, but its a good project: and like all good projects, I've learned something.
First, the sweater is much larger than I wanted it to be: thankfully, it's going to fit my roommate perfectly and I've been meaning in to knit him something for a while. At the same time, it's such a fine sweater that the extra size means that it took extra long to knit.
The second thing, and perhaps more importantly, when I started the sweater I hadn't really been knitting very much and I thought that what I really needed was something plain and simple and meditative. Apparently, except when I need distraction, plain knitting is not what I need, and I ended up being far too bored to actually want to work on this.
Thankfully, this week, I've mostly needed distraction, so I've been able to make rather impressive progress on the sleeves, and I expect to finish the last third of the second sleeve by this evening. That means I can start on new knitting projects, and I have a new sweater planed out and ready to go.
Very exciting, I know.
I got rid of a lot of yarn stash this fall--stuff that I had collected (on the cheap) that I didn't have a project in mind for, with the hope that a smaller stash would let me focus on being able to knit on projects that I really wanted to knit. Which is sweaters, primarily sweaters in finer gages with nice two color patterns.
And so I will.
For this holiday week, in addition to the aforementioned plain sweater, I have a sweaters worth of the most amazing fingering weight yarn in two colors, and a graph for a new sweater.
It will be glorious.