$950 and they aren't even leather.

There's this web site. Vintage Textiles. They are... mind boggling. The clothing. My gods, the clothing. Ever had the urge to buy a twenty-six hundred dollar evening cape you will never wear? You will if you go to this web site. (I'm already plotting knitted replicas.) The workmanship, the creativity, the utter coolness... someone talk me down. (And while you're at it, knit a copy of that green Worth capelet and call it a poncho. I'll never have the time with the ten million other ideas I've gotten from this site.)

At any rate. As I was cruising the web site, drooling and caluculating what my tax return would be (and whether the husbeast would divorce me if I spent the entire check on one shawl that I would then consider too nice to wear), I ran across these: Socks. Not just any socks, mind you. These are hand-embroidered silk socks from the Edwardian era. Mmhm. Hundred and forty year old socks. For nine hundred and fifty dollars. But let's take a closer look, shall we? Those are beads in there. Seed beads. Now I suppose I should be having a fit about the price, and I will in a minute, but actually, my first thought is, "In the Edwardian era, women wore long skirts." NO ONE SAW THE FREAKING SOCKS. This is up there with ribbons on your underwear. (As a small child I once asked my mother why we decorated underwear when no one saw it. I don't remember her answer, but I do remember being positive it was dumb to decorate clothing no one saw.) So there we have it. Socks that probably cost a fortune new (allowing for inflation rates and currency revaluing and blah blah, I suspect that the prices of most vintage clothes haven't really changed much from when they were made), with hours of handwork put in to them, and they wouldn't ever be seen. No sense. I hope someone buys them now and wears them with a short skirt.


The last of the great discoveries was the Fortuny jacket. I'm thinking a tealish chenille yarn for the velvet and a yellowy-beige smooth, shiny rayon for the gold stenciling. I know this classy woman who needs a Christmas present next year. And it'll probably take me that long to plot out the pattern and knit it.

Turoe? Never heard of it.

Have a baby and the knitting goes all to hell.

All this time spent changing diapers and cooking and feeding and bathing and clothing and carrying and hugging and kissing and playing and not sleeping has seriously cut into my knitting time. Seriously.

As if that's not enough, the baby has a tendency to kick me in the wrist while I'm changing her, leading to chronic pain flareups (I busted up my hand and wrist about eight years ago), which leads to taking narcotics for pain. Let me assure you, taking narcotics is NEVER good for your knitting. Ever. (We should make that a public service announcement. "This is your knitting. This is your knitting on drugs.") Saturday night I spent an hour knitting off a graph that was UPSIDE DOWN without noticing. The truly scary thing is, I knit six rows CORRECTLY before I realized what I was doing. I am reminded of those studies where they give spiders drugs and watch how they spin their webs. Not a good scene. (My knitting looks most like the caffeine web. Maybe I should worry?)

THEN, my cat, in another attempt to protest the idea of a baby in her house, has taken to CHEWING ON MY YARN. She slurps it up like spaghetti if you let her. Not good for the cat or the yarn. I'd broken her of this years ago, when I first got her (after she chewed through the yarn on a Dale of Norway sweater and ate about a foot of it), but apparently you bring a baby into the house, and all bets are off with the incumbent cat. I'm buying more of the yarn keeper thingies but they will do nothing to protect the two feet of yarn between the keeper and the knitting. We shall see what happens. Squirt guns are also a possibility.

So far as I can tell, this is the only up side to the whole baby thing:

All right, it's gratuitous cuteness, but damn, look at that smile!

Everything is so oddly calm...

My Olympics sweater is done, washed, and drying on the kitchen table. (Photos later after I fight with the camera and possibly the husbeast). It's all very surreal because this is the first time I've finished a project in a realistic amount of time since... well, it's been at least two years. Having the Dale done too just adds to the weirdness. Two projects done in a week. Very odd.

The Dale sweater was mailed to it's new home, and got there yesterday. My father-in-law was thrilled with it, and it fits, so there we go, one headache gone.

At this point I only have one project on the needles, a fairly easy square wrap for a friend of mine. (She's a painter and we're swapping projects. Wrap for her, painting for me.) It's on size ten needles, too, which is making the whole thing go lightning fast. (The Dale was on size fours and the tank was on size fives. On the Dale, one body round, front and back, was 290 stitches. On the tank it was about 200.) Being able to see actual progress as it happens is kinda new. I think I like it.

There's this strange calm in the house, as if chaos is just holding it's breath for a second. Like the eye of a hurricane. Or the playing the National Anthem before a hockey game starts.

Still babbling.

I can't seem to shut up today. I think it has to do with being trapped in a house with a five month old whose conversation runs to "nanananana" and tongue clicking. (I just checked on her and she's clicking in her sleep. I think she's developing sonar.)

The husbeast, being a sensitive dude (I think maybe the grid coloring last night worried him), brought home Godiva for me. Four bars of solid milk chocolate, one with almonds. Then he turned me loose to go hang out at the book store for a couple hours. During that time I've noticed a couple things:

First, South Carolina drivers suck. I mean really suck. Like try to merge into my lane right where I am, and then swerve around and look shocked when I toot the horn. Like, tailgate me when I'm in a big line of cars with another one right in front of me and I can't go any faster. SUCK.

Second, Godiva has a new line of chocolates out, Godiva Platinum. Because regular Godivas aren't expensive enough. And we all need more calories. Fan though I am of good chocolate, I wonder if it's possible to taste the difference between Really Good Chocolate and Really Really Good Chocolate. I'm willing to try as soon as I can afford some.

Third. I got the February-April issue of Cast On magazine, and... and... I am driven insane by what's getting put in 'summer knitting' issues. Let me ask you: If you are doing knitting for hot weather, WHY ARE YOU DOING IT IN BULKY YARN? "Oh, it's hot out, let's knit something cool - an INCH THICK SWEATER. I won't die of heat stroke, I'll leave the sleeves off!" Ditto for hoods. A sleeveless hoodie? Why? If it's cool enough to need a hood, why don't you have sleeves? And we won't discuss the fuzzy vest that made the poor model look like a multi-colored wooly mammoth. No. We won't. And this brings me to my biggest peeve of all: unfinished edges that have been startched to death so they don't curl. Some poor beginner out there is going to knit that and wonder what's gone so horribly wrong. And now Cast On will never let me write for them... that's me, building community spirit!

Pass the double chocolate cheesecake. I've only had one slice.

The Elann order.

I got my yarn from Elann Tuesday. Don't you just love getting yarn in the mail? Someone just drops a bigass box of yarn on your front porch. The only way we could make it better is if we could figure out how to make it rain yarn.

Anyway, since I started off this blog with a rant about Patternworks, I figure I should report any other experiences with internet yarn shopping... especially if they're positive. Balance the scales and all.

Shopping at Elann is exactly what internet shopping should be: no big deal. The web site always works, they always have what you order (due to a really slick inventory program, I suspect), and everyone's helpful and polite. Order your yarn, pay for it, and in about a week (if you're in the US; they ship from Canada) a box of yarn shows up on your front porch. They even put all your yarn nice and neat in a plastic bag, so that if your postal carrier drops it in the mud (something I wouldn't put past my postal carrier), you don't have to get upset. Makes for nice instant stashing, too. Postage is a little high, just a little, but again they're shipping from Canada.

I got two yarns, a rayon/cotton blend, Endless Summer Collection, "Luna" in colors Zen Red, Lapis, and Regal Orchid: this may be my new favorite yarn. I'm not wild about how it looks in straight stockinette, but it looks fantastic in slip-stitch patterns. Time will tell.





And a wool/llama (duck) yarn, Peruvian Collection "Uros Aran" in Endless Blue:


Everything was in stock, came in the mail when they said, and was very low stress.

I love Elann. Yarn on the porch. Life doesn't get any better.

It's all over but the sewing.

Which is a good thing, 'cause the Olympics aren't gonna last that much longer.

I finished off the front of the summer tank last night (after having spent Monday ripping back to the bottom of the armholes and starting again, due to a small problem with the sides of the V neck being different widths). I grafted together the shoulders of the front and back, even though I don't like how it looks, because I'm FOLLOWING THE PATTERN, damn it. For once I'm not screwing with it, I'm just doing what it says. (Okay. There was that one decrease I knocked over by a stitch, but that barely counts.) So today I sew the side seams, wash and block the thing, and it's done. I can't decide if I want to go out and buy matching embroidery floss for the seams (which is what I usually do) or just split the yarn and use that (which I hate, but it would mean not going out in the rain, and I'm already sick).

Since the tank is almost done, I took that as a Sign that it was time to start on some other projects. I began swatching for a kid's jacket/kimono sweater with the new yarn from Elann, and began Stage Two of Turoe.

Stage Two of Turoe started with the printing out of about sixteen sheets of knitter's graph paper and taping them together. (I was at one point pulling off three-foot-long lengths of tape, and giggling about how now that I'm a grown up, there's no one to yell at me, and the husbeast wandered by and said "I'm not going to ask. Don't tell me.") Once I had a life-sized, cut out version of the sweater made of graph paper, I sat down with the teeny-tiny freaking grid out of the book and started transferring it over. The husbeast again wandered past, took a look, and announced that if I color in the entire graph, he's going to have me locked up and declared insane.

If I suddenly stop posting, you'll know what happened.

This is what I deal with.

It's not enough that I have a baby, and a husband, noooooo. I have a cat hellbent on getting as much attention from me as humanly possible.




Pretend not to notice that swathe of purple hair in the foreground.

Still more done! With photos!

Here it is, in all it's glorious, uh, glory. The Dale sweater for my father-in-law: Pretty, ain't it? It's pattern number 13811, also known as Hafjell. Instead of the usual suggested colors, I went with colors 0020/cream, 5744/slate, and 5813/mist. I also tweaked the pattern around to set in the sleeves, but it's looking like I didn't set them in enough so that was probably wasted effort. (I'm reminding myself it was educational. It's not helping much.)

The only problem I found with the pattern (other than a massive lack of detail, but that's typical of all Dale of Norway patterns), was the yarn requirement. I ran out of the 'second contrast color', in this case the mist/light blue. And I mean RAN OUT. Not a few yards short, I was off by an entire SLEEVE. I don't think setting in the sleeves could possibly have thrown off the requirements for the second contrast color much (if at all), so I'm thinking it was just really bad estimating by the folks at Dale. Beware: if you're knitting a size Large or bigger, you need more of that second color.

Here we see the knitted-in hem and JUST HOW FREAKING LATE this sweater really is:
Nothing like knitted proof of your complete screwed-up-ed-ness.
And last, but not least, we have here a close-up of the pain in the butt set-in sleeve (kindly pretend not to notice how the sleeve is too small for the arm hole) and the Fricking Two Color Lice:

I've also got a lovely photo essay entitled "What I bought at Elann.com", but I think I'll save that for tomorrow. All this blocking and photograpy has made me tired.

Donedonedonedonedone!!

Over Stargate and an episode of CSI last night, I finally finished the Dale sweater!! Ends darned in, buttons sewn on, the works. (No. I did not put in a zipper like the pattern called for. I do zippers for no man. Or woman. Or child.) I still have to block it, but that's on the menu for today. Hopefully it will be in the mail tomorrow and I can get busy with the summer tank. I need to get finished with THAT, because I've got a wrap on the needles that needs finished, and yarn coming for two more projects (a scarf and a kid's sweater, nothing epic), and I'm plotting two or three MORE projects. Including Turoe, which I've got to be insane for even contemplating.

I need help.

In other happy news (I guess), it turns out that my hand/arm problems are NOT being caused by knitting like a fiend, it's being caused by... uh... too much heavy lifting. As in, the eighteen pound baby we've got hanging around here. So, uh, I can knit all I want, I just have to quit lifting the baby and carrying her around. Yeah. That's gonna work. I wonder if there's any point in seeing a doctor, because they're going to say 'quit lifting', and yeah, like that's going to happen. But it's not the knitting, so that's good.

Photos of the Dale upcoming, when the husbeast downloads the camera.

Second sleeve! Woot!

In between baby management and NASCAR, I got the second sleeve of my father-in-law's sweater grafted in. This just leaves some hemming, a crapload of end darning, and some buttons to sew on.

This was the Olympic goal I was worried about. I may make it.

And I'm up to the start of neck shaping on the front of my tank, so unless I break my hand between now and the end of the Olympics, I'm good.

Do gold medals come in chocolate?

Okay. The purple hair.

It all started innocently enough; I was looking for some kind of quickie rinse to put on my hair to cover up the roots. It's dyed a dark brown, so I was figuring something dark brownish would do the job when my eye fell upon Loreal's new "Color Pulse". Real color. Like, "Chilled Plum", the color I eventually settled on. (I have a long-standing love affair with actual colors for my hair, but since hitting 35 have attempted to tone things down just a bit.) "Concentrated color mousse. No ammonia. No peroxide." the box says. All rightie. Of course there's this ominous note on the side of the box "Do you have lots of gray? Not recommended." But hey, I figured my hair isn't gray. It's WHITE. And besides, it's dyed dark brown and since there's no ammonia in this color it should go right on top...

...it turned NEON FREAKING PURPLE on the white streaks. Somehow. Even though they were covered up with brown hair dye. If I'd actually been shooting for neon freaking purple, I'd be thrilled, but I just wanted a subtle purple shine to distract from the roots, for crying out loud.

Mind you, I'm in South Carolina, not exactly the hippest state in the union (not even the second hippest). I wear my hair long and pulled back and I can't see it myself, so I tend to forget my hair is NEON FREAKING PURPLE and when people stare I glare back at them.

Just like an angst-filled teenager. We are attempting to get photos that do the hair justice.

Someone pass the yarn.

I scare myself.

Does anyone else think like this?

I had the baby in her little swing watching Noggin this morning (I tell myself that Noggin isn't baby brain abuse because it's EDUCATIONAL, it's not like it's REGULAR TV rotting her brain), and on came this cartoon, 64 Zoo Lane. One of the main characters is Georgina the giraffe:

My first thought? "Hey, that yellow with the blue-on-blue spots would make a cool sweater."

Never mind that I look like crap in yellow.

Oh. And I have purple hair. But that's a post for another day. Or at least later after I fortify myself with chocolates and diet Pepsi.

Turoe update.

Yet again proving that I am all hopped up on yarn fumes (what do they dye this stuff with, anyway?), I bring you the results of my internet search for discontinued Rowan yarns, and my figures for knitting it with something else. For those of you who haven't seen the Alice Starmore pattern for "Turoe", the entire sweater is knit with two yarns held together, so you can combine the colors a bit and get subtle shading. It also means you basically have to buy enough yarn for two sweaters.

I hit eBay, that great clearinghouse of all things yarny, and started cruising around for the yarns and colors I would need. Found some, didn't find others. Rough estimate, it would take me about a year of constant searching and between three and four hundred dollars to gather up the specified yarn to knit this sweater. Silk-stones are going for about $11.00 a hank. (That choking sound you hear is me, having a stroke.)

Okay, option two: Some other REALLY FINE yarn available in fourteen shades of blue, cream, and brown. I found one that suited the purpose: Jamieson and Smith jumper-weight two ply. And while I've nothing against Mr. Jamieson or Mr. Smith, and in fact adore their product, I'd have to buy enough for TWO sweaters, again with that doubled yarn deal. We're looking at $120 minimum, probably more.

I keep returning to the fact that no matter what I spend, or how well I knit it, I'm going to have a baby puking on it. This gets in the way of spending much money, even if I had it. (This is what is keeping me from hand-dying the yarn, also.)

Option three, which I become more and more fond of as dollar figures dance before my eyes, is to just knit the damn thing with heavier yarn one strand at a time and get over the idea of delicately shaded swirls. If I do that, I can knit it for about $80 with high-quality yarn (Dale of Norway), or even less, depending on what I'm willing to pay. Hello, I think we have a plan. If I don't like it I can give it away for Christmas next year. (Note to self: Make it in a generous size so it'll fit nearly anyone.)


With that, I leave you with a photo of the original Turoe stone:

Some new favorite things. Oh. And knitting.

Last night, being Valentine's Day, with the husbeast thoughtfully bringing home chocolate and flowers ("Here, babe. Sexual organs. I love you."), I did what any loving wife would do: Locked myself in my home office and finished the back of my Olympics sweater. Yes indeedy, I finished the back! Only a front to go. (Knowing my fondness for second sleeves, I wisely chose to knit a tank top.) If I finish early I'm going to join Team FO and work on one of the umpteen unfinished projects around here. (Mostly it's sweaters that need another sleeve. I'm not joking.)

Has anyone else thought that maybe we should change this to the Obsessive-Compulsive Olympics? Nah. Me either. Nothing OCD going on around here. Nuh uh.

I have found that it's amazing how much knitting time can be found in a day. All it takes is ignoring housework, meals, dishes, laundry, and, well, anything else. I haven't quite got the baby to change her own diapers yet, but we're negotiating. She's willing to hang out and watch TV, so long as Little Bear isn't on. I don't know how a five month old can develop viewing prefrences, AND make them known, but it's happened. Just what we need, someone else with an opinion around here.

New favorite thing the first: Choxie. This is the new medium-end line of chocolate (it's not quite good enough to be high-end, but for the price paid, it's excellent stuff) from Target. I'd been pigging out for several weeks on the milk chocolate truffles, but today I got something that's an edible version of silk roving yarn: A candy bar of peanut butter with pretzels in it, coated in milk chocolate. At 420 calories a bar, I should probably switch back to the silk yarn.

New favorite thing the second: a new line of children's clothing called "Wee Waves". So new, in fact, that I can't find a web site for them. But it's all solar-protection clothing rated at SPF 50 or higher, and affordable. And cute. I got the goober a little pink beach hat for seven bucks today, and now I don't have to worry about her scorching her little bald scalp. Very cool.

Oh, and speaking of Target, and knitting... they're selling plastic containers with holes in the lids, made specifically to hold yarn while it's being knit from the skein. Knitting has gone mainstream. I still can't get over it.

We have sleeve!

Actually we have two sleeves, but one of them is actually sewn into the Dale sweater body. We're, um, just gonna pretend we don't notice that the sleeve top is too small for the BIG HONKIN' HOLE I cut in the side of the sweater for it. And look the other way when you notice the Armpit Fudge. (At the time, it seemed obvious to set in the sleeves, since dropped shoulders look like crap on 99% of the population. Now I know why our forbears didn't do this - it's a pain in the ass during finishing.) I have told myself a thousand times that it will all fix itself in the blocking. Yes. It will. Of course it will.

Have you hugged your yarn today?

The night before the Olympics, and what did I find myself doing, while the rest of the Knitting World was out gathering up yarn and patterns and needles? Yup. Cutting steeks. I'm still desperately trying to finish that Dale of Norway project before cold weather season is over for the year and my poor father-in-law has to wait until NEXT year to wear this past year's Christmas present. It seems intolerably cruel to give someone a wool sweater in, say, July, doesn't it?


Then, since life wasn't confusing enough, the husbeast had Friday afternoon off and watched car races all day. Which meant I missed the opening ceremonies which was fine because I hear they were pretty darn silly lookin'. So at 2:05 of Olympics Day, this is where I was at, conceptually speaking: I hadn't even wound the yarn into balls. I have since decided I'm going to knit straight from the skein because it makes me feel like a daredevil.

I so need a life.



Last night, after a day of fiendish knitting (all on my summer tank, glorious glorious plain old stockinette stitch, forget all that complicated finishing stuff on the Dale), I started flipping through old Alice's "Celtic Collection" with the intent of actually knitting "Turoe" sometime this year. (Yes, I am certifiable. The Olympics has me all hopped up on yarn fumes.) That's when I noticed it: The gauge listings. Aberlady - 18 stitches to TWO INCHES. Rosemarkie - 31 stitches to FOUR INCHES. Lismore - 20 stitches to THREE INCHES. What in the hell? Other than being insanely fine gauge (even I, the Dale knitter, quails at anything smaller than six stitches to the inch), what's with the different measurement standards? Two, three, four inches? Confusing much? (But I still want to knit one. It's a sickness.)

Screw the Olympics! There's a new tomb!

That might have been a little emphatic, but hey. I was always the no-tact type.

Anyway. Yesterday they found a new tomb in the Valley of the Kings. Untouched! Unlooted! Undisturbed! First one since 1922 when Carter found ol' Tutankhamen. Five mummies, all from the eighteenth dynasty they think... I'm hoping this discovery will eventually shed more light on the whole Akhenaten/Nefertiti/Tut thing. Okay. Okay. Your eyes are glazing over because the ancient Egyptians DIDN'T EVEN KNIT. And their fiber of choice was linen, which is just nasty for knitting. And they thought sheep were unclean. Fine.

But a NEW TOMB!! Darn it, I wanna be an archeologist.

I'm gonna go get psyched to cast on during the opening ceremonies in Torino. Happy knitting, all.

What do you mean, FOUR DAYS?

As always, time has gotten away from me, and I just realized this morning that it's FOUR DAYS UNTIL THE START OF THE OLYMPICS. Why do these things always happen? So, anyway. I've got four days to: Finish the Dale sweater (1/2 a sleeve and some finishing to go - it's possible, especially if I quit blogging and get to work), find the pattern for my Olympics project (no idea where it is. Probably my office. That's not much help.) and find the yarn for it (in my stash. Kinda know where that is).

Well. This is a challenge already.

Goals for 2006. And 2007. And...

I have before me an entertaining little document entitled "Sweaters, 2006" that I must have written while pregnant, because I don't remember writing it even though it's in my handwriting(much of my pregnancy is a fog. It's better that way). Unearthed while shoveling out my home office, I've been giggling over it for a couple days now and figured I should share. I guess it's a list of sweaters I wanted to knit this year.

For your amusement, I offer my goal list:


This is "Innsvinget jakke med broderi" from "Norsk Strikkedesign". (Yes, as a matter of fact, I AM one of Those Maniacs who buy those books.) It's a steeked circular knit, six stitches to the inch on size five needles. Hip length, I'd have to fix the freaky collar, every darn stitch is accounted for on the chart (you should see it, it's like a puzzle). This would only take me, oh, three months to knit. If I had all the time in the world and undivided attention to give it. I've already got the yarn for it, so I'm going to knit this sometime. But probably not this year.

Second, "Turoe" by Alice Starmore, found in her "Celtic Collection" book. (I just did a search on 'Turoe' in an attempt to find a photo. No joy, but the original stone that inspired the sweater is DARN cool looking.) It's the cream, tan, and blue free-form spirals. In intarsia. At five and a half stitches to the inch. Most, if not all, of the yarns are discontinued, so I'd have to spend at least a month figuring out what to substute (and how to afford it), before I even got started knitting. And of course Ms Starmore would have me flogged for not using the right yarn, messing with her colors, and mentioning her name on the internet.

Next on the list, "Dragon Jacket". This is an ancient pattern copied for later knitting. (yes, copied, have me put in chains for copyright infringement. If I could by the book, I would. It's out of print. The copy is from the library and I swear I haven't sold it to anyone.) It's been going on twenty years that I've had this pattern, and we're still waiting for 'later'. I think later's gonna be later than this. It's two multi-colored dragons (mostly blues - each scale is a different color) in intarsia, swirling all over a cardigan. In cotton, at about eight stitches to the inch, on size three needles. In cotton. Intarsia. Did I mention the cotton intarsia?

We have a Kaffe Fassett in the lineup (pipe dream? hormone induced fantasy?): The Geometric Star jacket from "Glorious Knitting". That's the one with the stranded-color hexagons and the six-pointed stars in two colors? All mostly in blue? Yeah. It's at four and a half stitches to the inch on size nine needles, so in that respect it's rational, but there's no yarn pack, half the yarns are discontinued, and I can't afford Rowan anyway, so it'd take me at least a year just to accumulate the yarn before casting on. Other than that, this one is almost do-able.

Last in this little list - that's right, I only planned to knit five sweaters this year, what would I do with my extra time? - is the "Weeping Sun and Moon" sweater from "Meg Swansen's Knitting". If you haven't seen it, it's stranded color with a sun on the front and a moon on the back. The charts are almost as big as the sweater (Four pages of the book for the front; another four pages for the back) and every stinkin' stitch is charted with absolutely no repeats. But it's a beautiful sweater. Five stitches to the inch, so it's almost possible except for being too afraid to look away from the chart for ten seconds. You'd have to knit it with a ruler, a highlighter, and a bunch of post it notes.

Oh, and did I mention the OTHER project I've got going?

That's right, I've got a FIVE MONTH OLD BABY to take care of! Oh yeah, plenty of time for knitting, especially that color-stranded stuff that you have to pay attention to every minute.

I don't REMEMBER smoking crack while I was pregnant... but I can't believe hormones alone made me this delusional. Strange. Very strange.

Second Sock Syndrome? Hah.

Try second sleeve syndrome. I've already knit one. I know how it works now and what it looks like. The romance is gone. All it is is a pit of knitting that's not complicated enough to be interesting and not easy enough for me to zone out on. (Fricking two-color lice. Just about the time I zone out on some solid stockinette, I realize there was supposed to be two rows of speckles five rows back.) The fact that there are increases every FOUR rows and pattern repeats every SEVEN rows may have something to do with my crankiness. But darn it, why can't Paris declare one-armed sweaters the new fashion? It would save me so much trouble.