Loose Ends

The other day, I cast off a delightful two-nighter of a project (Beanpole Beanie – Rav link) and found myself at a loose end.  I had nothing to do.  I say nothing, that term is relative.  I only had two things to do, both of them jumpers.  Royale needed a sleeve (still does) and Displeasure, well, the less said about that the better.  It doesn’t need a lot of work, but I’m still angry with it.  One of these days I will finish it and then write a dissertation-length post about it and why IT ANGERS ME!!!!!!!!  I find jumpers tricky things, the idea may be simple, the knitting basic but then you run into the roadblock that is tailoring and fit.  Fit is why Displeasure has annoyed me, fit is why I knit to the specified measurements of Royale, fully in the knowledge that I would have to rip back a good few centimetres.  However, Displeasure aside, I have started to accept this in good heart and of zen mind and go about my knitting/ripping business.  Hey, my body is just like that, why bother, it’s not going to change your shoulder to boob ratio any time soon.

However, I find sometimes that fitting a jumper to yourself can take more time (factoring in procrastination here) than the actual making of the garment, even though (with a helpful friend/partner/lover/accomplice/mother) all this rigmarole can take only a few minutes.  You put the thing on inside out, get that special someone to tack in the sleeves and, boom, you sew it in.  Simple.  But it’s still annoying sometimes and with my patience level (not high), I tend to leave projects that won’t be perfect straightaway to fester on the table next to my chair for a few days (/weeks/months).  Maybe I should stick to hats, scarves and socks.

So, back to my point.  I was at a loose end, not being in the mood to finish anything, and I started browsing around for new things to do.  I already sort of have one, this cabled jacket from Drops design.  I want to knit it in Sirdar Romance which I have used before and really quite like considering the closest it’s been to a natural fibre is what I’ve rammed it against in the Box of Stash.  I wanted a close-fitting cropped cardigan.  I had also decided that I wanted to repeat the cabled motif on the sides of the cardi and adjusted the ribbing accordingly.  It didn’t really work (K2, P4 looks a bit odd at the best of times and having a K4 at the sides looked, well, odder).  So right now I’m sort of up in the air about what to do with, to P4 or not P4, cable or no cable.  Hmmmm.

I have been trying to knit from stash (there’s a reason I bought all this yarn, for goodness’ sake) but some (ok, a lot of) Araucania Lonco has me stumped.  It’s light fingering mercerised cotton and I cannot find a pattern for it anywhere.  I tried knitting a Jaden with it held double but after extensive reknitting and ripping and reripping I lost the will to live.  Knitting is supposed to be about joy, not suicide.  I may try it again, maybe my problem was that I held it double.  Someone else did it in this yarn and it came out lovely.  Anyway, I have found this pattern from Drops (again, feel the Drops love here).  I am keeping everything crossed that this goes OK.

In other news I am going away on Friday to Stratford -upon-Avon for the weekend, yaaaaay!  I’m going with my three best girlfriends from uni and it’s been ages since we’ve been together, as always with these things.  Stratford is supposed to be lovely, I feel the papparazzo coming out in me.  Now to decide what knitting to take with me…