Permit me to gloat.

You know how I always say you should wash your swatch? And how wool does very funky things when it hits water? And how ribbing and cabling in particular do VERY funky things when they hit water?

Yeah.

Believe me now?

That's a growth of about eight inches/sixteen-something CM. Good thing I washed my swatch. Otherwise I'd have to kill myself right now. (Yes, the washed sweater is the proper size that I wanted.) And thanks to Bells asking questions and poking at my brain, I had the wit to measure the swatch BEFORE washing and write down that figure too. So when I got halfway done with the sweater and said "Oh FUCK, it's too small!" I could measure and do math and know that I was really on target. (I do confess, there were several "Oh man, I hope to hell that swatch was right" moments.)

I shall gloat a bit more.

Oh, and one other thing.

Sekhmet, you FUCKER.

There's still some question in my mind what to do next. For now, I'm going to concentrate on getting the Faux Russian Scarf done; I'd really like to have it done and mailed before I go to Florida in mid February. (I've said THAT before. But it would be nice.) At some stage I'll get bored and want a secondary project. That will likely be a pullover for the Goob, with this.

According to my calculations, that's about 185 yards of handspun. Not enough for an entire sweater, even for someone as small as she is. But there's enough to do a yoke, and I'll finish out the rest of the arms and body with something or other from the stash; I've got several things to choose from. It will likely be either the rest of the dark blue tweed from my father-in-law's sweater above, or some light blue Paton's wool that Bells sent me ages ago. Right now I lean toward the light blue just because I'm tired of looking at the dark blue. But the dark blue would be more intelligent in terms of showing dirt. And it's possible that matching the weight of the handspun will mean something else entirely.

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For those of you asking for Goob photos, here you go.

I got her a dry-erase book from Dorling-Kindersley, that teaches how to write the alphabet. It's really quite clever; you trace shapes of all kinds (to learn the M and W motions you trace the spikes down the back of a dinosaur), then you move on to the actual letters. The Goob calls it 'the pencil book' and begs to use it. (We're rationing it so it's fun for longer.) I swear I'm not torturing her to learn her letters, but I thought learning them might be easier if she wrote them at the same time. And she's enjoying it, so it's all good.

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Otherwise, the winter VK is in stores everywhere but Charleston. One of my blog buddies in POLAND has a copy, but I can't find any in the stores here. I suspect a conspiracy. (Just kidding. I really suspect lazy stock boys.) Anyway, checked out the VK website and the new designs are up, so as soon as I can get a magazine, I'll do a review. Really, this new issue probably wouldn't have sparked much ire, even if I weren't sucking it up. Most of the stuff looks pretty good. Or at least okay. We'll see about sizing and pattern accuracy, though. And I'm thinking of throwing in some cost calculations for fun.


I'm gonna go gloat some more. I WASHED AND MEASURED. Neener neener neener.