Step 1.  Decide to knit your baby nephew a sweater because he only has one.

Step 2. Realize your other nephew has no sweaters, and decide to knit him a sweater too.

Step 3. Decide that you should consult the nephew who can speak about what he would like.  Ask him several questions about sweaters, like what colour, pullover or cardigan and his preferences for anything else.  Find out that he wants a purple sweater. Dark purple.  Also, maybe a zipper sweater, or a pullover, but definitely not buttons, and maybe a hood, or no hood, and maybe pockets, or no pockets, but definitely not too warm. 

Step 4. Decide that sounds like a pretty simple hoodie.

Step 5.  Start ripping up the stash looking for any yarn that is "purple, dark purple".  Try to figure out how it’s possible that you don’t have a sweaters worth of dark purple yarn.  Contemplate the light purple yarn with 40% angora and realize that no matter how desperate the times are, the nephew in question is twelve, and that is really probably too old for a fluffy purple sweater, even if you really nail the hood.

Step 6. Realize that although Hank wouldn’t like that yarn, Sam would, and spend 45 minutes looking at pattern possibilities for a hoodie for her.

Step 7. Remember that you’re knitting Hank a sweater. Go back to looking in the stash.  Find green yarn. Reflect that green yarn is pretty nice.  Remind yourself that green yarn is not purple yarn and is therefore no good for purple hoodie.  Admire green yarn, and think about other nephew.  Other nephew is too small to pick colours, and would look sweet in green. Consider starting little nephews sweater. Spend an unreasonable amount of time looking for sweater pattern for wrong nephew.

Step 8. Realize that there is enough of the green yarn to make an adult sweater, and that means that after you make a little nephew sweater, there won’t be enough for an adult sweater, and so it’s stupid to use it up on this. Decide this means that you should make yourself a sweater, and spend time looking at patterns that would be good.

Step 9. Remember that you’re knitting nephew’s sweaters. Give up on purple, and look for something for Lou. Find cashmere laceweight. Start looking at patterns for lace scarf.

Step 10. Remember that you’re knitting nephew’s sweaters. Put cashmere back, but find orange roving as you do so, and consider how good you look in orange.  Take roving downstairs to wheel.

Step 11. Remember that you’re knitting nephew’s sweaters. Take roving back upstairs and put on shelf next to magazines. Vogue Knitting fall 2010 is on top.

Step 12.  Look through magazine, see great sweater for Megan.  Pull apart stash looking for enough red yarn to make sweater on page 27.  Find blue yarn. 

Step 13. Remember you’re knitting sweater’s for nephews. Put magazine back, but take out blue yarn and check yardage.  Get on Ravelry to see if that’s enough for Hank’s sweater.  Discover it is not, but see really cute vest that might fit Jen’s daughter Fenner.   Take yarn downstairs to ball winder.

Step 14. Start winding yarn, but see red and green fingering weight you bought at Verb for Keeping warm and remember good idea for scarf.  Take blue off wider.  Wind red. 

Step 15. Remember you’re knitting sweaters for nephews. Wonder what word for sweater is in Spanish because Lou is going to be bilingual.  Look it up on internet.  See a link to a Spanish sweater.  Follow link – find pattern a lot like something you saw on Knitty.  Search Knitty, and don’t find sweater but see really great hat.

Step 16.  Check gauge for hat and wonder if blue yarn already wound would be good hat.  It’s not, but that stitch pattern would make good socks.

Step 17. Realize that yarn is bad for socks.  Go looking for blue sock yarn in stash that would work for new stitch pattern and the socks you’re going to make.  While in stash, see dark purple sock yarn.

Step 18.  Remember you’re making sweaters for nephews – and wonder if there’s such a thing as Knitter Attention Deficit Disorder. 

Step 19. Repeat from step 5.

Step 20.  Wonder what the hell happened to your day. 

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PS. Here’s a little heads up that our November Knot Hysteria retreat will be live for registration on Monday. We’ll be in Port Ludlow, Washington, and the retreat will begin the evening of the 9th of November, and continue until Monday night. (that’s the 12th.) The theme will be Colour (because, that was a really good time last time) and once again, its a Dye, Spin, Knit retreat. Details to come on Monday, but I’m knitting, Tina Newton is in the dyeroom, and Judith MacKenzie will be in the pretty room over the water, teaching spinning. For the first time ever though, we’d like to give alumni (at retreat we call them repeat offenders) a chance to register first. They’ve been great customers, so if you’ve been to a retreat before, and you’d like to come to this one, please email us registration@knothysteria.com, and we’ll try to get you in. No promises, because we’re leaving a certain number of spots for the new kids, but you can try to beat the rush. The price is about the same as the last time, $745.

If you’re a business, and you’d like to contribute something to our goody bags, you can email us at that same address. We’d love to hear from you.