I must be stopped

In knitting news: yes, I still knit!! I've been dusting off the needles and have news on a few projects to share with you.

First, the "Sweater" I've been saying I was going to knit for almost a year now. You remember,

don't you? Yeah, me neither. Here's the link to refresh your memory. I am knitting #1 - Graceful Shell - but the problem I encountered, very early on, was that the yarn they call for is

discontinued, and the yarn that I fell in love with and want to use doesn't work with this pattern and the recommended needle size.

I am just not an experienced enough knitter to try and reconcile the difference on my own. I looked for other patterns, but I wasn't able to find any that had the one feature that I loved most about this pattern - the scoop neck. So I did what I always do when I get frustrated - I quit. I

shoved that yarn back in the bag and back in my stash trunk and called it a day. And knit up a

few more garter stitch scarves because let's face it, you don't have to gauge those and they

always turn out exactly how you want them to. But more on that later.

With the cold weather approaching, and with The Cowboy constantly asking me if I'm going to

ever knit that %#?@ing sweater (I view it as nagging, he views is as challenging me - potato, potahto), I have decided to give it another go. But here's the thing, I still want that yarn and I still want that pattern, so I am basically right back where I was before. I have thrown in the towel and admitted defeat. I need the help of someone who knows what the hell they are doing. So I did something I never, ever do (again, more on that later) - I knit up a swatch and checked for gauge.

It was, not at all surprisingly, way off. Ok, but I still don't know how to fix it. So I am sending it off to the Yarn Fairies. Yeah, I wish. How great would that be if there were little yarn fairies who fixed everything for you and you never had to think about stuff like gauge and swatches and needle size. But alas, my mom suggested the next best thing - her friend Nancy, who is quite a

good knitter and very skilled at the maths, (which I am not) and who is willing to help me for

free (I can do enough maths to know that that is good)! So I am sending off my little swatch and the pattern to Nancy (in Michigan) and she is going to try and fix it up so I can knit this sweater with this yarn. Happy happy. Hopefully.

As I mentioned, in lieu of not knitting a sweater, I have knit about a bajillion scarves.

Here they are all lined up on my stash chest.

Here they are close up, along with a nice shot of the scuff on our wall. Lovely.

To be fair, some of these scarves I knit well over a year ago, but the point is clear: I don't give them away, I knit them and keep them. There are 9 pictured here, but I know of at least 1 that is missing and I tore my closet apart trying to find it so it could be part of the family picture here. As if I needed that one particular scarf. As if I don't have another to replace it. However it is

green, which is my favorite color, and not represented here otherwise. Where is that damn scarf?

Also, I'd like to say in my defense that not all of these scarves are garter stitch. One of them was supposed to be the Sunday Market Shawl, but turned out less shawly and more scarfy. And

another is seed stitch - so there.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You are thinking that these scarves need hat friends. And you are right. I already admitted that until recently, I hadn't knit a hat properly. And my first one didn't turn out quite exactly how I would have liked. Or even remotely close to anything

resembling a hat, come to think of it. Someone asked me in my comments if I had done a swatch for the hat prior to knitting it. A ha. A hahahahaha. No, of course not. And I wonder why my projects continually come out all cattywumpus. But I regrouped. I frogged the hat and knit it again, on smaller needles (still not swatch though). Let's take a look at the before and the after pictures.

Before

After

A definite improvement, but I still don't think it looks quite right. I think it's just me though. I don't think I would have made a very good French person. I think it's the style of hat more than anything that isn't working for me. Oh well.

Feeling confident in my newly acquired hat making skillz, though, I attempted another hat, and (I think) achieved great success!

This is the Button-Tab Hat, a free Rav pattern, and it was very easy to knit. Seriously, why haven't I been knitting hats this whole time?

I knit this up to go with some fingerless gloves that my mom had made for me for Christmas.

She'd given me her leftover yarn to make a matching hat and scarf (!!!!!), and I still have enough left to do just that. Yay! Just what I need, another scarf. Actually, I think I might try cables with this scarf. I've never done cables, but shoot if I can do hats and socks, I can do cables.

I'm off to find a cute cable scarf pattern! I will have another blog later this week with a recipe that I promise you won't want to miss!