All done.

The pattern was loosely based on the Rocketry sweater, but I took the opportunity to change some stuff to make it better suit my needs. 

I kept the slight vee-neck, believing as I do that it is better suited to the particulars of the physique of the very young, who often lack necks.  I’ve always thought that the a round neck wasn’t quite right for a little one, and I’ve noticed that their parents seldom button that top button, the one that would settle under their fat chins – so I left it out entirely. The yarn is Spud and Chloe Sweater, a rather delicious confection.  (Colours were 7503 "Root Beer" and 7507 "Moonlight", one of each. Special thanks to Jennifer at The Purple Purl, who chose the colours. I’d have never picked them, but love it.) a delicious mix of 55% superwash wool and 45% organic cotton, perfect for a baby. 

I altered the bottom to include a ribbed edge, and added slightly mitered buttonbands, because the original Rocketry sweater had a roundish bottom that didn’t suit my desire for a tailored look – because, you know, babies like a tailored look.   My mum found wee buttons that matched the yarn exactly, and I did the math to space five of them top to bottom. 

My mum picked it up today, to drop off to the intended baby, who I know won’t care about any of it, except it is soft, and doesn’t have a button that insults his lack of a neck, and will keep him warm for some time to come.
I love that I don’t know this baby, he’s the son of a friend of my mum’s, and I’ve never met him, and probably never will, but there he will be. Sitting warm and cozy in the Canadian winter, spitting up on the handwork of a knitter he’s never known. 

Oh Knitting.  I love you. 

It has been an odd few days here, as I wrestle with a to-do list that isn’t horrific, but seems to be intractable. Despite hours of diligent work, it’s just one of those lists that won’t shift.  At  the end of the day all I am crossing off is things like "make dinner" and "tidy desk" and "drink coffee" (and I only put that on there so I would have something to cross off.) I can’t shift the big ones, like "get ready for Madrona".  I know that what’s wrong is that my list is too holistic – I’ve got big stuff on there like it’s one item when really it’s a whole bunch of little jobs that all have to be completed before the thing is done.  In reality, I’m totally kicking arse and taking names, I just don’t get to cross anything of of the fraking list until I’ve done all the little jobs, and that’s lame. I love crossing things off the list.

When Meg was little, she used to freak out when she saw a big job in front of her. It turns out that she’s a really holistic thinker – she sees the entirety of the task ahead and gets overwhelmed.  Her teacher that year (who was pretty much an angel, a brilliant, brilliant angel) said that she needed to learn to chunk tasks.  You don’t have to learn a hundred spelling words this month. You need to learn three today, and three tomorrow… it’s not that big a job if you split into easy little chunks. Don’t look ahead, don’t see the big picture. It’s too big. He was right, and the whole family has been practicing "chunking" ever since then – and I realized this morning that even though I’ve known this since then, and practiced it –  I have overlooked doing it on my to-do list.  "Get ready for Madrona" is a huge job, and really it’s a whole bunch of jobs and sitting there on my to-do list like a leviathan, I’m not going to be able to cross it off until the 12th of February.  If I split it up? I might be able to make some visible progress on the stinking list.

I’m going to try it with everything on the list.  "Finish baby sweater" should really be:
Get buttons.
Do math for button band.

(My mum chose the buttons. I like how when she brought them over she arranged them in a smile.)

Knit button band.
Sew on buttons.

See that? I get to cross off two!  "Make Lou a sweater" should really be:

Spin.

Ply a little bit and knit some swatches to see if it’s right.


(The top one is the winner, for anybody keeping track. Soft and bouncy and just spot on for gauge.)
Spin a full bobbin.
Spin another full bobbin.
Spin yet another full bobbin. 
Ply.
Set the twist.
Knit the sweater.
Sew on the buttons.

I wouldn’t get to cross much off there, but at least I can see something resembling progress. Something that keeps me from transferring everything on today’s list onto tomorrow’s list like it’s some horrible textile version of Groundhog Day.  "Make Lou a sweater" indeed.  I’m going to go re-write my whole list. It will be a lot longer, but at least I’ll finally get to cross something off.

I don’t know what happened last night, but I couldn’t get it together. I made dinner and went for a run, but the run was really only an attempt to strip me of the energy to keep hating the way things were going.  There’s absolutely plenty that’s gone right, tons of stuff, but last night a sweater didn’t work out and then the resident teenager was, well… teenaged. (The amazing thing about parenting is that I never stop being surprised by how it’s all going down. By the time a kid is in their late teens, they’ve matured so much that you can be really shocked by the occasional snit, and you’d think that I’d be so well equipped to handle something like that. I’m no rookie. The thing is that because the teenager is actually growing and maturing and gaining skills, the quality level of the snit just keeps going up, and the appearances of said snits start being infrequent and therefore shocking. (Not as shocking as my own snits, but there you have it.)  It means you never really get the hang. If had to give a quick list to someone going into parenting teens, it would be to remember this: A) SHUT UP.  B) Don’t take the bait. C) Don’t take it personally. D) You are probably too pretty for prison. Walk it off.  For the record, I usually remember all of that a few minutes too late. Maybe I need a tattoo. )

So last night I’m in this completely foul mood, forcing myself to be nice and civil and kind – and I decide to work on a little sweater. Not the blue and brown one, because all it needs is button bands, and they’re fussy and I hate them and it just didn’t seem like they were going to improve my mood at all, but nothing cheers me up more than a new thing, so that’s where I went. I need to have another little sweater in the works, a birthday sweater for Lou, and I’ve been enchanted with Antler, so that’s what I’m thinking. The thing is, it calls for Aran weight yarn – and I didn’t have any in cream handy, so I bought Tanis Green Label Aran.   I love this yarn. Bouncy,  nice tight ply that will show up the cables really well,  consistent, soft, superwash… it’s got everything going for it in the baby sweater department.  I knit a sleeve for a gauge swatch – I do that a lot for baby sweaters.  If it works out, you’ve got a sleeve, and if it doesn’t, well then, it’s only a sleeve. I don’t mind ripping it out, or at least not much, or not usually.  I’d started a sleeve, realized the fabric was way too open, and had my first concerns about yarn/pattern compatibility.  I ripped it back, went down a needle size, and finished a whole sleeve.  I still thought things were too open, but it is a natural coloured yarn- not dyed at all, and sometimes that means that it can be a little compressed. I find that dyed yarns are less likely to bloom or puff up when I wash them, but that’s sometimes not the case with yarn that hasn’t had a bath yet (dye or otherwise) so I sent the little sleeve for a swim, laid it out to dry, and then, because I am almost terminally optimistic, even in the face of awesome evidence to the contrary, I started the other one.

This morning I went and fetched it. You can see there’s been very little change. (Unblocked on the left, blocked on the right.) Things are tidier, the stitches neatened up a lot (right there, I feel like that’s the best evidence I can show you for why you wash/wet block knitting) and the yarn rounded out and bloomed a tiny bit, but not enough to change the gauge. It’s still too loose for me to be happy with.

See how there’s lots of space through the ribbing and the fabric? That’s going to look sloppy really, really soon when it starts being worn, and in this knitter’s humble opinion, knitting takes too much time to have things not work out because of some lazy moment when I decided it was "good enough".   I thought then that maybe I could go down another needle size, which would definitely make it a better sweater… but…

I’m already at a perfect 20 sts/10cm, and the pattern calls for 18, and going down a needle size would likely give me 22…and that my friends, that means that unless I’m willing to re-write the pattern for a DK weight yarn, which I’m not… I’ve got the wrong yarn for this pattern.  (It also means, that the Green label Aran is a beautiful, lovely, well constructed yarn that probably isn’t actually an aran weight, or at least isn’t for this old-school knitter with this idea of how knitting should look.)  I was pretty bummed, and I set it aside so I could have a proper pout. I really, really wanted this yarn to work, and it’s not going to, and now I have to go to the store and buy some yarn because I don’t have any natural coloured aran weight yarn, and then, then I had an epiphany.

I know how to make yarn. Things might be looking up.

My friend Denny? She loves weaving in ends.  Loves. It.  All of her peers have used this to our advantage.  Barters, trades – casual arrangements, we’ve all taken advantage of Denny’s proclivity for finishing ends up in one way or another.  (In the past, we have even done things like strategically leaving a piece of knitting lying around with the ends showing. She can’t resist. She’ll weave them in out of reflex. It’s like a disease.)  Denny can’t tell you why she likes it, exactly.  She says it’s satisfying, she thinks it’s fast and fun, she enjoys the sense of closure it gives her to tidy things up and make them all nice.   Something like that.

I am nothing like Denny.  I hate weaving in ends.  I accept that it’s part of knitting, and I don’t hate weaving in ends enough to let it shape my choices – not like knitters who hate seaming enough to let it put them off a sweater knit flat, but I have it in the same category for fun as peeling potatoes or washing the coffee filter.  Something you have to do if you want to do something else.  Like have coffee, or potatoes, or a sweater.

Last night I was sitting there on the couch, tidying up a wee sweater that sort of materialized around here over the weekend.  My mum, who really isn’t the sort of mother who gives you choices when she wants you to do something, told me that I was going to be making a sweater for a baby who’s special to her.  Her friends hadn’t known what flavour baby was arriving, so they got a lot of yellow and green and white, and Mum’s only request was that the sweater not be baby colours like that.  This means that I was given carte blanche.  I could do anything I wanted, and I took full advantage of this to have a little fun.  I decided what I would do, that it would take two colours, and I called up The Purple Purl and told Jennifer that I needed two colours for a baby boy and she could do whatever she wanted, and that someone would be by later to get it.  She chose, Joe transported it home, and that night I started a sweet little sweater, and remember, I could do anything I wanted. What I wanted to do surprised  me, and got me thinking. What did I do for that sweater?

Stripes. Lots of them. Even pulled the work out and rejected six row stripes in favour of four row stripes, and then chose to cut the yarn at the beginning of every change because a) I think it makes the change point look better than carrying the yarn up without cutting and b) THAT WAY THERE ARE AS MANY ENDS AS POSSIBLE.

I sat there last night, weaving in end after end after end… and I was thinking that I hated it, and then I thought about it.   For a knitter who knows she’s not a masochist,  and says she hates weaving in ends,  I’ve  made some interesting choices lately.  Maybe, after more than a decade of exposure… maybe Denny’s getting to me.

Never again.

As of this evening, I’ll have been working on this scarf, and this scarf alone for one week.

Seven days. Seven days of the same thing without a single moment of disloyalty, unless you count socks.  I don’t count socks, because they fit in my purse and this? I don’t mind trucking along several feet of scarf, but I’m not the sort of person who can manage 8 balls of yarn on the subway. I’d get home and discover that I was short a ball of Saddle Tan that fell out of my bag on the Spadina platform, and as much as I don’t care for the colour, I do need it, and soaking in a puddle of salty slush is no place for any yarn to end up, no matter what colour it is. 

So, if you don’t count socks (and we are not going to) I have been totally loyal to this scarf for seven days – and tonight it stops. Tonight I’m finishing.  Even though I have 105 ridges (that’s 210 rows) to go, I can tell that tonight’s my night. With my wool as my witness. I will finish this scarf on the seventh day, and it and I will part ways tomorrow.

The force is with me.

The scarf trudges forward.  Yeah verily, though I knit through the shadow of the Doctor, and all that there is and will ever be is garter stitch, let me tell you that there is nothing about this project that makes me want to flinch hard away and knit a freakin’ hat like Saddle Tan.

Saddle Tan is the dark beige in this scarf.  I hate it.

I hate it with a passion that makes me want to paint my body a bright turquoise and put yellow ochre gems in my hair just to fight back against the swelling, nondescript oh-please-try-harder-to-be-a-colour awfulness that is Saddle Tan.

I know several things about this colour. I know it’s important that it is in the scarf.  I know that it belongs there, and that like spiders, it is an important but loathsome part of this ecosystem.  I know that like you need to add salt to cut the sweetness in cookies, and like the way you wouldn’t know happiness if you were never sad, I know that Saddle Tan is the ying to the the other colours yang.  I know too that some bad things are good things, like some plants need an environmental trigger to reproduce, like pyriscence – where not only is a fire not bad for the tree, it’s the only way more trees can come about.  I know all that, and I know that in the grand and harmonious saga that is this scarf, Saddle Tan is vital, and lovely, and perfect and that the scarf would be nothing without it.

I also know that Saddle Tan is absolutely the colour of every soul-sucking  basement apartment I have ever been in, and I just want you to know that if I flip the frak out while I’m knitting this, it will be because there were 22 ridges of Saddle Tan in a row.

When I posted the picture of my latest project on Thursday, I thought for sure that it was obvious.  When I asked for guesses, I got a surprise that had unintended effects.  The project is, as many thought, a replica of the Season 12 scarf that Dr. Who wore.  (Because of copyright, and the fact that Dr. Who belongs to someone else – the thing is cleverly called "Who’s your Favourite Time Traveller?" I got it as a kit from The Little Red Mitten, but the pattern’s here. It was irresistible.)

I started it on Wednesday, and let me tell you, I was chock full of delusion.  I honestly thought that it would be done by now.  I’ll pause here to allow those of you who have knit one of these bad boys to pick yourself up off the floor and wipe the dust bunnies off the side of your face.

You see, it’s about 12 feet of garter stitch in sport weight wool.  Yeah, that’s a fair bit of knitting, but I realize now that I allowed three little words to convince me that it would be a walk in the park.  I heard "garter stitch" and "scarf" and decided that there was absolutely no way that this would be hard, and it turns out I was sort of right.  The knitting itself? Easy peasy.  How couldn’t it be? The trick to this isn’t knitting it, it’s not stopping knitting it. The skill this takes? It’s stamina.  Last night I was knitting away on it, and realized that I’m about halfway, and I took a break and went to read the comments on the blog post for a while. 

I was surprised at all the great guesses.  Andrea thought it might be a Baby Surprise Sweater for Lou.  (Although with that much yarn, it would be for his 18th birthday.) Pamela thought maybe a Moderne Log Cabin blanket.  Etcgirl said it might be All the Shades of Truth,  Pat had her money on a Betty Mouat cowl.  Kimberley said a Ron Weasley Blanket,
Sue, Jennifer and Mary said a Temperature Scarf…. and as I went along, looking at all those pretty things, I started to get a little feeling. 

A feeling that said "Hey Steph, this scarf is sort of long. You should maybe take a break from it and make something else. One of those things. Or something like those things… like a hat. Or a lace shawl… or maybe a sweater… a grey sweater. A pink hat.  Rainbow mittens….or you know… ANYTHING THAT ISN’T THIS."  I heard that voice, I respected what it was saying, and I thought about it.  I thought about it enough that before I even really knew what was happening, I was in the upstairs stash pulling down all sorts of things and getting ready to take a little scarf break and then it hit me.

This scarf is like a marathon. I am not the sort of person who can stop. If I stop to take a little rest, I will never get back up. The scarf will go to the back of the closet, I will pretend I never started and it will become something else that Rams and Presbytera mention and I ignore or WORSE it will go to the back of the closet until next December, when I will drag it up (because it is the 50th anniversary of Dr. Who, and how am I supposed to let that go) and try to finish it in a few days in a marathon of garter stitch nightmare that – while it may be fun for you, will be terrible for me.

No, no.  There is only forward my friends.  Only forward.

Only two last Christmas presents to show you, all done and finished well before 12th night.  That means that in the end I only fell down on Joe’s socks, and frankly we’ve been together long enough that I can likely either get away with it or make it up to him, and honestly,  he’s the sort who would only pretend to be bothered by it so I would have to make it up to him, which means that in a roundabout way he’s also probably happy I didn’t finish.  As much as those aren’t done, these pretty Ellie Mitts are.

I’m a little addicted to these, which is funny, because to be completely honest I’ve always thought that fingerless mitts were a little silly.  I mean, if it’s cold enough that your hands might need mitts, wouldn’t your fingers need mitts too?  It’s always my fingers that get so cold, but it turns out that I wear mine all the time, they really do make a difference… and now in the deep of the winter, I’ve been putting them on under my mittens – so that when I inevitably have to take my mitts off to get my keys, or find bus fare, or use my phone – I’m not totally exposed.  Turns out they’re awesome, and it’s hard to beat the MCN kits for these mittens from Indigodragonfly for cozy.  Lovely yarn – and the buttons have me entirely charmed.

(The colourway is "Shall we Tint", exclusively from Shall we Knit.)

This pair (together with the other little thing I finished but haven’t shown you yet) wrapped up my commitment to Christmas knitting, so I did something (other than plod away on Joe’s socks) that I think is super responsible. 

I started a Christmas present for next year.  Any guesses?

This thing happens to me all the time, where I own a tool, and another person owns the same tool – only their version of the tool seems to do a lot more things than mine does.  Take my laptop – Ken has the same one, the exact same one, only his does all this really great stuff and mine doesn’t. His practically makes dinner and folds the laundry, and mine – well. I have trouble believing they’re the same computer at all. I feel like maybe his came with elves in it. Magical dancing clever elves that make his computer so much more useful than mine.  

The same thing has been happening with my loom.  I’ve got that little Cricket rigid heddle, and pretty much it makes plain scarves. Meanwhile, Syne’s rigid heddle makes spa wash cloths, and Dorothy’s rigid heddle made a crazy table runner, and I can’t even talk about what FarmNana pulls off. I kept thinking that they must have better looms. Looms with some of those bad-ass elves in them.  Then I saw this book – The Weaver’s Idea Book: Creative Cloth on a Rigid Heddle Loom and I wondered if it might help make my loom more like their looms.

It does.  It’s still a scarf though.  Don’t want to get all crazy.