Cattywampus

A Columbus Day list

1. I went to Denver for a conference.  It was pretty there, the food was good, and we found a fabulous yarn store where I purchased too many things.  (Not THAT much, but considering I didn't need ANYTHING, it was too much)  They had Mini Mochi...I've never seen it in person before!  SO FUN.

So fun that I got two colors...  :-)

2.  I started a sweater for Scott for xmas, Rene by Anne Hanson, the v neck pullover version.  I am knitting it in Berroco Vintage because he thinks 100% wool is hot, and this way he can wash it without fear of ruining it in some way, which I think will allow him to wear it more.  I got about 7 inches done on the way to & from Denver.  Considering we're in October, I'm happy with that.

I have made him two other sweaters, but more at the beginning of my knitting and this one should look quite a bit more "ready to wear" than homemade.  He does wear the others around the house, but not out - but I don't wear the sweaters I knit 5 years ago out either...so we'll see.

3.  The Swirl is coming along.  Here it is a week or so ago.

And here it is now.  

Progress is happening, and it's AMAZING how fast those 300 stitch rows go compared to the 600+ stitch rows at the very beginning!  I am a bit concerned about yarn usage, but nothing to do but keep on knitting and keep my fingers crossed.  Also, it looks a little small, I assume extreme blocking will happen because of the laceweight in there, but still...a little nervewracking.

I am having SO much fun knitting this that I already bought yarn to make one of the other Swirls in the book (see Denver yarn shopping above).

4.  It is fall in the Poconos.

Fall is just so very pretty in the country, in the city it doesn't look like much at all.

5. Duke is still hanging in there.  Right now we seem to be at an uneasy truce with the cancer.  His lymph nodes are not getting any bigger (he is on a chemo regimen that we give at home), and he is still himself and not in any pain (as far as we can tell, he acts like normal other than a few side effects from the drugs he's on).  We've been here for 4 months, and they had given him 6 months 4 months ago, so I assumed he would be starting to decline by now.  

The vet says it is possible, but unlikely, that we can hold the cancer at bay for a year or more, it all just depends on how his particular cancer responds to the drugs.  

So, I am taking nothing for granted, watching him like a mother hen for signs of Something Very Bad happening, but so far, we're just status quo.  I am too worried to let my guard down and think that we are in the unlikely set that can fend off the cancer indefinitely, but I am accepting that for now, he's comfortable, happy, and enjoying life, so I can stop being SO very anxious until he gives us a sign that he doesn't feel well anymore.

A buddy pic:

6. Cream cheese ice cream is amazing.  Thanks to Jodi for posting it as a suggestion.  I added cinnamon and allspice and a bit of vanilla extract to make it sort of apple pie flavoried, then I served it with crumbled graham crackers on top.  YUM.

7. I have Jury Duty tomorrow.  I don't mind it AS LONG AS I don't actually get picked to serve.  In a big place like Philly it's a pretty organized and crazy system, about 400+ people show up in the morning and get taken to a court for the selection process, then whoever isn't chosen gets bumped back to the main pool of people and the whole process starts over.  So in a regular 8 hour day I might get to sit through jury selection on as many as 3 or 4 trials.  It's interesting to be part of the process, and I get a lot of knitting done, so fingers crossed I don't actually get picked, and it won't be a bad day at all.

8. Christmas is just over 2 months away.  OMG.  Commence panic and planning.

9. I have a quilt ready to go, my not enough energy to complete it.

Maybe in a week or two.  I love the way quilt tops look with light behind them, all sort of glowy and luminscent.  It helps get a good sense for the color values too.

10.  Finally, a book review:  (it's been quite a while since anything has been good enough for me to post)

Carrion Comfort, by Dan Simmons

This book is very good, Simmons has a lot to say about the nature of evil and human nature and how those two things play both with and against each other. It was a little long for me, one too many "the bad guy isn't really dead" scenes, but he's really an extraordinary writer. One of the few authors I've run into who actually expands my vocab (along with China Mieville), it's nice, for change, to read a book isn't written for the lowest common denominator.

If you haven't read any Simmons, I would recommend checking him out, he has other books & series if this isn't to your taste.

 

The thing is...

Here is my last FO of this FO string.

This is my 'make a funny pose' face. 

This is the Lettuce Pullover, in Wollmeise lace (the one time I saw the Loopy Ewe update in the first 5 minutes and managed to frantically purchase some).  I have to say...I'm not ecstatic.

There is nothing WRONG with the sweater, I love the color, the fit is good, I can see that it's going to be totally practical.  

But...the thing is...I could have bought it at the Gap, y'know?  Granted, it was my decision to leave off the mini cowl neck, but it didn't really look great on the finished ones in Ravelry, so I decided not to take my chances.  I joined the fronts earlier and "made it work" for a square-ish neckline.

So I just spent an insane amount of hours (I don't think I can adequately express how slowly those sleeves went) making a laceweight sweater (an expensive laceweight sweater), that I could have bought at the Gap for probably 24.99 (or less if I caught it on sale).  

There's the color, that makes it not Gap-ish, and I guess the neckline is fairly unique (I'm not sure that's in a good way) but I think that's it.

I am not criticizing the designer, she turned out a very practical, very wearable pattern...I just didn't think it through.

For the hours I spent on this sweater, I would much rather have a gorgeous piece of lace, completely unduplicatable in the commercial world for many reasons, not the least of which being the time I invested in it...I feel a bit like a traitor saying this, but I would rather have spent my money at the Gap.  I spent more on the YARN than this sweater would have cost me if I had purchased it instead of knitting it.

We'll chalk this up to lessons learned.  I'm not distressed, I like the sweater, it's comfy, it fits, I love the color...I'm just sort of baffled about the whole thing.  I will definitely knit lightweight sweaters in the future...just not plain stockinette sweaters that could be purchased at any big box store.

(I PROMISE to post my progress on the Swirl in my next post, it really just looks like a compressed squiggly circle right now, hopefully it will look more interesting after the upcoming work conference.  I will say that it's totally fun to knit and I'm already thinking about the next one!)