Yay me!

I pulled it off and finished a sweater in sixteen days. I would have sworn that was impossible with a baby in the house, even if the sweater WAS sleeveless and one color and all stockinette. (My previous speed record for a sweater was three weeks, when I had all the time in the world to work on it. That one had sleeves, though. And two colors.) Here it is, in all it's non-glory, since my photography sucks: This is the sweater off the cover of Vogue Knitting, summer 2004 (it takes me a while to get around to these things). The original was peach, if that helps jog your memory. This one was knit in Adrienne Vittadini "Marissa", a 30% silk/70% cotton blend. I used nine skeins of color #706, a nice powder blue that's totally lost in this photo, which looks like a revolting dead-elephant gray. I probably could have done it with eight skeins if I shortened it a little. (And I did size large. I'm betting a medium could be done easily with eight skeins.) The yarn was really nice, held together beautifully, wasn't crunchy or stringy like most cottons (I assume that was the silk talking), and has as much body as cotton can have. Of course they've discontinued it. There's still a bit out there on the web, available, though.

I thought I followed the directions pretty much to the letter, but looking at this photo I just realized I put ribbing on the bottom and lengthened it so my post-pregnancy flab was in no danger of showing. Yet again the patterns bow to my will. Ahahahaha.

The knitting olympics pretty much saved my sanity. It brought back all my old enjoyment of knitting after I'd had to take a year off from it because I was pregnant. (I couldn't take any of my chronic pain medications, with the baby, so I couldn't concentrate enough for knitting, or much else.) Plus I actually finished something, which gives me a nice buzz of accomplishment when most of my days, my goals involve laundry and getting oatmeal out of my hair.

All hail the Yarn Harlot!