Head Cold From Hell

Usually being sick does not suck that much for me because I kick it within 48 hours, I only get sick once a year, and I can spend that time in bed watching TV on the internet and knitting. Right now I have this cold that has been going around, and people I have surveyed say it lasts anywhere from 2 weeks to several months (with pinkeye). Right now I am in day 5 and I will spare you some of the mucusy details, but the thing is I feel so crappy I don't even feel like knitting.

In between back episodes of Lost and Friday Night Lights (I don't even LIKE football) I have managed to get a start on the new Deep Breath. I realized that part of my swatch phobia is due to:

1) If I bought the needles for the project, and then swatched it and realized I need smaller ones, I definitely don't want to go out and get ANOTHER pair. Having a set of Boye interchangeables helps with that a lot.

2) If I make a swatch, I tend to count the stitches and say "eh, close enough!" This is related to point 1. I unconsciously round up or down so that I don't have to switch needles.

3) I can make a swatch that is spot on, but this whole blocking at the end thing has me freaked out. It's a wild card.

4) I realized that when I knit in round, continental, it's much looser than when I swatch in continental on straights. I guess I could swatch in the round but that seems like I would have to cast on and knit a ton of stitches. Jenn started telling me some way she does it, but after the 3rd or 4th mathematical computation I was lost. I will get her to explain it to me again when my head doesn't feel like it's been injected with Brie.

So I made a mini swatch, just to confirm point four, but not large enough to actually be useful. I'm going down 2 needle sizes to a 6, and this is cotton so much less springy than the wool I used previously. I hope I don't overshoot and make it too small and tight, but I figure since it is top down I can correct course along the way.

Hey! some actual content!

Ok so I guess the reason I haven't done anything with this blog is that I felt I didn't have anything worth posting/ saying but now I do! I finally finished my first sweater, Deep Breath. After 6 months. Ok well during that time I was also working on hats, gloves, baby sweaters, baby hats, etc. I'm not really done with this sweater, because the body and arms stretched out freakishly long when I blocked it, so I am going to take the sleeves and bottom edge in YET AGAIN. I thought wool would shrink a little but apparently that is not the case unless you get into some crazy semi-felting mode, which I might do in the future. For now I'm just wearing it to get the feel of it and make modifications for my next go-round on Deep Breath, this time using cotton. (the red Kona Bay that Sunflower Fairy Knits raves about).

Cotton scares me (for knitting). I haven't really used it much, but it seems unforgiving and prone to random shrinkage or expanditure. I'm sure it will be fine, especially if I knit a swatch (as I type this however I realize that I'm not going to bother, I'm still doing something wrong with swatches since they never seem to help me).

The main thing is I want to do the armholes differently so there is not the peek-a-boo lacy increase. Tonight is SnB night but I'm so sick with a head cold I don't think I'll be able to make it. grrr. Maybe I can call someone, after all it's a knitting emergency, I want to cast on RIGHT NOW!!

I'm amazed at how much feedback I get considering I don't actually put any content on my blog.

I guess my attention has been hijacked by Facebook. I do actually see the point of keeping a knitting blog, and especially updating my projects on Ravelry. Even cataloguing my yarn makes total sense now. Unfortunately I only get a burning desire to work on all these aspects when I'm at work and don't have access to yarn, cameras, etc. Probably sometime soon it will happen though, I tend to get sucked into things I'm interested in, if that makes any sense!