It's Started

Last night I cast on the body of the red-red-red sweater - twice. Actually, twice is good, as it is not unusual for me to make at least three CO's before I am satisfied. I almost always use a long tail cast on, and am usually fairly accurate on estimating the amount of yarn required for the long tail, but last night the first CO fell short by inches. So I undid my work, added another foot to the long tail, cast on again, and now I have an extra 2 feet of tail. Go figure. The lace stitch up the front is called "snowdrop" but I don't really see it. I picked this stitch because it easily straddles the front of the sweater and it involves no purl stitches. I timed how long it takes me to knit 190 stitches - between 7 and 10 minutes. So, if I work on the sweater for an hour each night, I may be up to the armpit in about two weeks. Hmmm.

Now that I am knitting a sweater, I am getting more interested in knitting sweaters in general. For my next one, I would like to do a bulky Aran style sweater. I think. I'm researching patterns.

And speaking of patterns, unless I buy a book of patterns (rare because we have a really great library system here), I usually limit myself to free patterns I find on the Internet. But I have been looking for an interesting lace shawl I can knit using one skein of fingerling weight yarn, without much success... until I visited Spritely Goods where there is this lovely shawl pattern for sale. I talked myself out of the $230 boots, but I think I can afford $6 for this pattern... if I don't weaken and buy some of the handpainted yarn, too.

And then there are the new Harmony Guides, from Interweave. Fortunately, these are on order at my local library, so I can try before I buy.

I wish I could retire early, so I could spend more time doing the things I love.

I'm still meditating on a New Year's resolution. I'm trying to identify something that, were I to find myself on my death bed tomorrow, I would be wishing I had done today.