Knitting Update

Okay, so the knitting. Well, the Sunrise Circle Jacket was done...mostly. Truth be told, it was done last week, it was just done wrong. You see, for whatever reason, I made the foldy-over part smaller on one of the panels. Strange, and I didn’t really notice it until after I got the whole thing sewn together. Grr.... I kept telling myself that it didn’t matter, that no one would notice. But then I hung it up and kept looking at it and every time I would just get annoyed. I also decided to enter it in the fair, and so it really does have to be perfect...Mormon ladies do the judging around here, and those ladies really know their handicrafts. And their white bread (white bread is the fiercest competition going at the Eastern Idaho State Fair!).

It’s actually pretty fortunate that I decided to enter it in the fair, because otherwise it would probably take me another eight months to rip that section out and redo it. It’s also fortunate that I’m dying to start the Coachella, which uses the same size needles at the Circle Jacket, because otherwise I would have launched headlong into Coachella and then been up until 2 am this Thursday, getting the Circle Jacket ready for entry on Friday.

As it was, I was up until 2 am this morning with a little insomnia and wandered into blogland for a while before finally getting the surgical scissors out and re-opening the Circle Jacket. Again. Counted, added another three rows and for some weird reason only known to the knitting gods, now it was bigger than the rest. Wha...??? So, rip some more, bind off, and .... perfect! Phew! Now I just need to resew and block. Pray the blocking works. I’ll show you the real results before it goes to the Fair on Friday. I totally love this sweater, though.
In other knitting news, I did allow myself a little swatch of the yarn I’m using to make the Coachella. It’s a fun, wobbly silk and cotton mix I bought eons ago, and it was really always just waiting for something like Coachella. The swatch is awesome, but a little bigger than the specified gauge, so I’m going with a smaller size and hope it kinda evens out because the yarn is so wonky that I think it would be hard to knit it in a smaller gauge. Yeah, it’s a kinda risky tactic, but we’ll see what happens. I’m not so afraid of ripping stuff out as I used to be.

And the Ooops du Jour is completely finished. I really like it, but I’m not sure I love the yarn as much as I thought I did when I started. It’s pretty heavy, and it does sort of give me that “big girl” look that I don’t like. I would think the ribbing would help accentuate my waist, but I guess having been a former “bigger girl,” I’m still a little sensitve to that. Anyway, I’m going to debut the Ooops tomorrow, so I’ll get some pics to post.

I’m revelling in the fact that this will be my last free Monday, once school starts next week. I’ll be revellling on Wednesday, too, for my last free Wednesday. It always seems like I have something to do, and while I really like that, it is nice to have a night where you can just come home and do...nothing every once in a while. I’m seriously considering cutting back on some of my nighttime Pilates classes for that very reason. It’s so hard to do that, though, when you have people wanting (and many, needing) to work out with you. But since fulfilling my New Years’ Resolution to “knit more,” I’ve really been enjoying that and wanting to keep that momentum going.

It’s also starting to feel just a little like fall outside. We had some terrific thunderstorms this weekend, with practically torrential downpours. I loved it! I went over to Jackson Hole to pick up my hubby and his climbing buddies (and let him take me to dinner at the Mangey Moose), and it just poured! They were soaked to the bone.

It’s actually cold today too. Well, not cold so much as cool. It’s wonderful. I had my little heater on to warm my bare toes and ankles under my desk, which is a far cry from sweating my brains out last week!