Reality is a bitch.

This whole knit-a-sweater-in-two-weeks idea is completely for the birds. Not happening, at least not with size ten needles and Icelandic Lopi. After three days of fiendish knitting, I've got a hem, a single pattern repeat, and am on narcotics for my hand. There is a lot good about this sweater, I'm really happy with it so far, it's just not happening in two weeks.

I've had a love/hate relationship going with lopi yarn for several years now. I love it's thermal qualities, and it's price, and the way it looks (and that it comes in a zillion colors). The straw stuck all through it (unlike in silk) is kind of interesting to me, letting me imagine how a blade of grass got all the way from a field in Iceland to my living room in South Carolina. However. When you make a stitch with it, it takes far more effort to pull the stitch through than it would with, say, merino. The yarn isn't smooth. So you kind of fight the stitches into place. On the
other hand, I had to tear back a round and a half tonight, and simply pulled out the circular needle, pulled out the wonky rounds, and put the remaining stitches back on the needle. Those things stay where you put them - the roughness worked for me, that time.

While I had the sweater off the needle, I laid a tape measure on it, and it appears to be about 48 1/2 inches around. Final fit needs to be fifty, and the yarn relaxes a good bit when it hits water, so it appears even with the hand problems and the yarn warfare, I am spot on for size. Go, me. Plus, one round of this sweater is 180 stitches. The last sweater I knit was 320 stitches per round. So I feel like I'm getting away with something, even if I do have to fight the yarn.

Box Two from last weekend's yarn shopping spree arrived today (one box to go, coming in from Canada). It was a ball of Encore worsted in dark blue (my yarn of choice for kid stuff: I just can't bring myself to give a small kid something hand-washable) to use along with some other Encore worsted around here to knit my nephew a Christmas sweater. AND... new yarn for another go at the wrap. (This will be the third yarn change, I've lost track of how many starts it's been.) It's a REALLY nice wool/alpaca/acrylic blend that's kind of a variegated neutral. I'm looking for a lace or other texture stitch that will work with it instead of against it. (I'm about ready to say "Hell with it all" and knit an overgrown Clapotis.) Anyway, photos when I can focus my eyes again. (Narcotics don't mix well with photography, at least for me.)

I tend to babble when I'm drugged. Even when I'm typing.

Remember the cut finger that I glued shut? It healed without even a scar. There's a tiny jog in the lines of my finger print, and that's it. No infection, no nothing. I'm gonna have to do that again. (Glue myself if needed, not slash my finger open with a paring knife while stupidly cutting a hole in a felted bag.) I described the entire thing to a friend of mine who is a nurse, and she informed me that these days, they use MEDICAL GRADE SUPER-GLUE for just such
situations, and if I'd gone to the Emergency Room, I'd have wasted an afternoon and paid $400 to, you guessed it, get my finger glued shut. Something for us all to keep in mind.

Off to knit something while I'm drugged. That's always interesting in the morning.