must have it

Little to show for my absence of blogging, though I did pull out all the stash, re-organize it, bag it and move it to my sewing room. Unlike DisKnit, I do not have that modest a stash. I love to buy yarn, and have fallen off of every yarn diet I've ever been on. I like color, texture, and smell in yarn, and am a notorious fondler and sniffer of hanks in stores and fiber fests. Of course I'm also notorious for starting projects and not completing them, though I am getting better at frogging things I have no intention of completing. Like poor, unswatched-therefore-too-big-again Marilyn's. Gone. She now exists as 8 balls of beautiful Silkroad DK, waiting for a proper project. I love Wendy's design, and will knit it, in the yarn it deserves (and the one she recommended?) down the road.

To console myself, I started the long-anticipated, much desired, and very much feared Must Have Cardigan, from the Patons Street Smart book. Now I know you're all saying "Oh Kbrow, this is so 2005." but it took me more than a year to screw up the courage to take this on. I bought the recommended yarn and made the requisite gauge swatch over a year ago. You know. Back when I was swatching. So I've dedicated the past weekend (which also included a trip to Portland with P) to cranking out these cables and funny little wrap stitches. I love this pattern, but it's a slow knit. The yarn is Patons Classic Merino, in a nondescript noncolor known as "Dark Natural Mix." I'm of the belief that aran sweaters should be neutral in color, and this wholesome oatmeal color is just like oatmeal, nourishing, somewhat bland, and fills my need for something grey and soothing to work on. I have my problems with this pattern. Like you cast on a number of stitches, then increase some more after you do the ribbing, but before you start the cabling chart. It makes, for an inexperienced knitter like me, a little jog in where the cable starts, so that one leg of the traveling cable isn't coming off a rib. It bothers me a wee bit, but everything else is working so smoothly that I dast not rip and rework. I have a feeling this sweater, its bits and pieces, will be on the needles for a many a long month.

There's lots more to report, but I have to get myself in gear for work. I leave you with a shot of Cricket's long nose.