I really should be knitting right now

Two days left of the Olympics, and I've still got sleeves and yoke left to go on the sweater. I was in pretty good shape up until last Friday, when I had knitted the body up past the increases and decided to try it on to see how far I still needed to go to make it to the armholes. So it turns out that if you're knitting a very fitted sweater, and you've lost 40lbs or so since you last took your measurements, "guesstimating" is not the way to choose your size. I was looking to have about 2-3" of negative ease, and ended up with about 4" of positive ease. Rip.

Yesterday I finally got back to the point where I was ready to try on the body again: success! It's exactly as fitted as I want it to be. So I took a little break to pick out the eyes for the owls. There will be 19 owls total, which means I need 38 buttons. I had considered just going out and purchasing some, but really, with the number of buttons I have in the basement, that just seems silly. I knew there was no way I had 38 of the same button, so I decided that each owl would have a different set of vintage button eyes. To keep this from looking like a crazy circus freak sweater, I wanted them all to be fairly close in hue and value, so I chose blue, green, and grey.

I found lots of buttons that would be perfect...if owls only had one eye. Turns out the problem with having lots of unique buttons is that many of them are unique in the literal sense of the word. I was finally able to find 19 pairs of the right size and in complementary shades, but it took much longer than I had planned, cutting into precious knitting time.

I was able to work up to the armholes last night before I was finally too tired to knit anymore, and had planned on casting on the sleeves this morning (remember, I'm doing short sleeves so they really shouldn't take all that long [insert mildly hysterical laughter here]), but then discovered that I had neglected to wind any more skeins into balls (there is actually a reason I did this: my ball winder keeps trying to eat my yarn, so I have ordered a new one. Sadly, it's not here yet.). So I went to do that, only to discover that the first two skeins I pulled out were so tangled I had to wind them manually. Grrrr.

However, I am finally ready to sit down and knit. If I can get the sleeves done before lunch (see above re: hysterical laughter), I'll be in pretty good shape, I think. Cross your fingers for me!

posted by Laura Y. @ 6:38 AM