Thursday, January 10, 2008

Oh the pressure!

At Leah's request, here are my Valentine's hats. Pretty cute, don't you think?

Last night was fraught with knitting frustration. After a day of parenting frustration. I have not been happy with my beloved Tilli Tomas scarf. It was too wide and I'm not completely sold on the lace concept. I would really like to do a cable knit scarf and I finally found one after spending hours searching for just the right pattern. And now I'm back to my original plan. I always forget--cabling takes up so much yarn. The cable pattern I found calls for twice as much yarn as I have. And while I would normally consider purchasing more yarn to complete the project, at $39.95 a skein for Tilli Tomas, I'm not doing that. So I restarted the scarf with my original pattern and I'm making it narrower. It will be fine and I will wear my $80.00 scarf that has nearly brought me to tears every day.

I also spent time with those horrid convertible mittens. I restarted the flap 3 times before I realized that I was doing it backwards and there was going to be no way it would actually go over my fingers. By the time I realized this I was so angry I just had to put it away and try to finish up my mom's sock (which would be finished by now if I had not spend my entire morning assembling and reassembling, and then reassembling again Eric's Aqua Raiders legos so he could play with them in a big bucket of water in the kitchen because he begs me to do this every day and won't use the bathtub because he's convinced all his legos will go down the drain and he then proceeded to get water all over the kitchen floor and I then had to force him to change his soaking wet clothes while he tried to convince me that they would dry).

And then I am reminded why I don't knit for myself. It's so much easier to knit for others. I don't know why. But I am rarely happy with projects I choose for myself. I guess I feel that if I have to look at something every single solitary day for the rest of my life, I want it to be perfect. Not that I'm prone to exaggeration. Ever.

And I have just learned that the new baby in the family is going to be a boy. What to knit for the new nephew?! It certainly can't be one of my stock items. I need to find just the absolutely perfect and unique pattern that will bring me joy with every stitch and not once make me want to chuck it across the room. All before mid June.

Perhaps he would like 1/2 of a pair of black convertible mittens and beaded scarf?


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

THanks for the pic - those ARE adorable!

I've been seriously thinking about commissioning a pair of convertable mittens - my Amazonian hands are too large for women's gloves, and men's are just, well, too manly. I find my fingers get too cold gloves anyway, but I can't do anything with mittens on. Your creation might be just the thing.

Interested? Can you scale for my freakish hand size?

~Leah
my pink toes