The chainmail sweater.

I had some questions, and damn if I've got anything else to blog about, so here you go. Details on the Chainmail sweater.

...this was the only photo I could find of it, but there are more on my Flickr page. It is knit from a pattern by Elizabeth Zimmerman, in "Knitter's Almanac". I believe it is the month of March and is called the Chainmail Sweater in the book. The yarn is Brown Sheep's Nature Spun sport weight, and I'm pretty sure I knit it on size fives. The blue/gray is stranded across the fabric, and the orange/pink/purple stripes (only me) are worked as regular old stripes, with purl stitches in some places to break up the color progression. Wait, I might have a photo of that... No, can't get to it on this computer... stupid network. (I live in a geek house. We have more computers networked than there are people living here, including the Goober.) Anyway. It was my first wool project, my first steeked project (armholes and front opening; I machine-stitched it), and my first stranded color. You can see how I kind of got hooked on the whole process. I think I knit this in like 2001. Maybe earlier.


There's not much other news. I'm officially in a chronic pain flareup, which means my brain is going "HOLY FUCK THERE'S A PROBLEM!" because of the constant pain, and is going into emergency shut-down mode. Which would be handy if I'd severed a limb, but while trying to make Christmas cookies, it's damned annoying. I get rushes of adrenaline for no good reason, and my circulatory system tries to shut itself down, meaning I am freezing cold. (Running conversation: Me: "Is it cold in here, or is it me?" Husbeast: "It's you." Repeat a million times a day.) Coping involves a lot of annoying bullshit like taking lots of short naps (because I can't sleep that long at once) and trying to avoid sensory input which means laying in a quiet, darkened room, feeling like a ridiculous parody of a swooning Victorian maiden. However. I've got one new coping technique in my arsenal, which I'd never had before, and it's working extremely well:

Laughter is ALWAYS a good thing.