Lately because I spend so much time at work I end up feeling icky if I don’t make inordinate amounts of progress on various projects on my days off. This usually results in my whipping out Peaks Island to squeeze out a couple of rows whenever Boyfriend says “Hang on, I just want to check my fantasy baseball league real quick*.”
That said, this weekend was kind of a huge wooly mountain of productivity.
It started with a Joann’s trip. I have yet to find** a nice local yarn store in my area so I always end up going to Joann’s. And also Joann’s (avec coupons) is way nicer to my bank account. And this time I had a 25% off entire purchase coupon that was about to expire.
I only meant to buy two more skeins of Wool-Ease in seaspray***, but somehow I ended up with an additional two skeins in blush heather (I decided to go with a pale heathered pink for the booties), and then two skeins of the Chunky Wool-Ease in wheat for a new project.
Yes, my instant gratification project of the weekend was a long cable-y sweater. You know what though? In about a cumulative day’s worth of knitting, I’ve finished the entire back piece and cast on the left front piece. I love this yarn. Except that it’s mostly acrylic.
And yet, somehow I still feel that icky un-productive feeling.
You know that feeling when you have two papers to write and 200 pages to read and an exam to study for so all you want to do is clean the house even though normally you hate cleaning?
That’s kind of what happened with my knitting projects this weekend. I sort of have a Super Secret Side Project going on with a fast approaching deadline coming up**** and instead of working on it like I had originally planned to do this weekend, I kind of half-assedly finished one part of it Friday morning and then ignored it all weekend.
I even decided to attempt my first-ever crochet project from a pattern. Ignore the lumps please.
The moral of the story is that my car is out of gas so after work I’m going to drive over to the gas station to fill it up and on the way I’m going to stop at Joann’s***** for more chunky yarn. It’ll be my way of bartering with myself. “For every panel of chunky sweater you finish, you HAVE to do one section of the Super Secret Project.” I don’t see any flaws with this plan. Not one.
Speaking of which, this Aidez sweater is absolutely delightful to knit. The cabling has enough variety to be interesting but it’s not so complicated that I have to check the pattern every row. In fact I even managed to memorize the pattern after several rows.
Lastly, want to hear something really stupid? Like, ridiculously stupid?
<shame>
I’ve been using markers incorrectly. Until this weekend. For some reason unbeknownst to me, I’ve mistakenly been under the impression that markers are hooked into your knitting and that there’s some technique of knitting through a loop that somehow transfers the marker to the next loop. In fact I’ve been meaning to look up that technique and have been either not using markers, or just moving them to the top every ten rows or so. Why I never thought to slide them directly onto the needle between stitches is completely beyond me.
</shame>
*Last time “real quick” consisted of a fifteen minute phone call with a friend in his league and then over an hour of poring over my laptop.
**Re: venture out and look for.
***I’ve been calling it seafoam but it’s actually called seaspray.
****More on this later.
*****These two places are not even remotely close to each other.
