He's 12, I can hardly believe it.
Well, as the beginning of not only the school year, but also soccer season has started, everything seems like a blur. Life has taken on a new speed. It seems as though I've had many problems with my car lately. It is a trusted minivan, which I was a little apprehensive about buying. Must maintain the rockstar image, you know. But now I've had it for 4 years and I love it, except when it's broken and not working. Really not all the fault of my little minivan. There have been some extenuating circumstances... The reason I mention this is that lately I've felt like I've been spending a lot of time and money on the car. Time and money I'd rather not spend.
My knitting has been following suit. It's been particularly time consuming, but not that satisfying. It's been a lesson, I suppose, in patience and doing things right the third, maybe fourth time. Equally frustrating. I'm working on Liesl by Ysolda. I had some Cotton-Ease in the stash, from long ago when it was truly black, so I thought Hey! almost like it's free. Well, now I'm starting again for the 3rd time. The first time it was too small, the second time, I realized halfway down the body and the top were not matching. One was right side out and the other wrong side out, whoops. So I ripped it out and started once again, an even bigger size, which I'm hoping will be the right one. But hear that HOPING. I'm a glutton for punishment. Why oh why don't you just swatch and get it over with? I don't know.
And now I'm finishing up the Tempest Cardigan from Knitty. On the button bands. But it is tight, and my finishing abilities suck. I can knit and knit and knit, but when it comes to sewing, it's an ugly thing. So I love this color combination. I'm not wanting to give up entirely, I've decided to try to make a top down cardigan modeled after the Tempest (using my soon to be frogged yarn). I have to say this is going slowly, one because I've never made a top down cardigan on my own, without a pattern. I'm using Barbara Walker's Knitting from the Top . But as a stringent recipe knitter, I'm having a bit of trouble with the vague-ness. A lesson in trust I suppose. And stick-to-it-iveness. Will she or won't she be able to do it?
Not the last project on the needles, but one I'll talk about because I'm really enjoying it is Abby, a cowl made from handspun yarn. I'm spinning it and knitting right off the spindle (oooh aaahhh). I knit one of these already with yak gifted to me by Kristine of AFVKW. It is beautiful and soft, but somehow I didn't feel finished with this pattern and felt like I needed to knit it yet again. Which is unusual for me, but it's somehow so captivating, maybe because it's small, finite and one size fits all.
In spinning news, I've been spinning some baby camel and silk also from Kristine, and it is incredibly soft and wonderful to spin and beautiful to look at--it's 10% chance of rain--you should go get some right now if you spin.
So as I knit and re-knit my current projects, while waiting for my car to be fixed, I try to remember that these are small problems, they are fix-able, do-able. Really I should be grateful that these are my problems. It's just hard to recognize sometimes.
