Friday, February 13, 2009

it's the overthought that counts

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This is my Francis on Monday, hastily thrown on my handy dandy backdoor tree. I didn't think I'd have another chance to show her to you unfinished. When I shot this, I'd just realized I was heading down to DC by train on Tuesday. Five hours with my iPod ,knitting, and a trackside view of old industrial spaces, peering into the neighborhoods passing by? Love it. It is transcendent. I say this sincerely, do not read anything sarcastic into it.
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Anyway, I had one sleeve almost done, one to go and a cowl. Which is no match for that much train knitting roundtrip. Plus, did I want to drag along a whole sweater when I already had major shleppage of cameras & lighting equipment to deal with? No. My brain began to whir. I'd need another project. peopleOther than this piece of old unrelieved boredom , nothing else is on the needles. What next? I devoted a long tumble down the Ravelry rabbit hole to the question. An hour or two gets lost in the process.

Vestuary! I'm a vest loving type. Pre-blog I knit Grace, in this crazy # 163 color of Sisik , which I wear often. I find this Blue Sky pattern , plan to purchase and download it before departure and squeeze an extra 15 minutes in my crazy Monday to swing by a yarn store. It takes...almost an hour. Damn, wouldn't you know their inventory of worsted weight yarn is so low, I find nothing lovable and vest-worthy.

My so-called stash is mostly single leftover skeins. I find 850 yards of Ultra Alpaca yucca. I do not want to use it for the vest. I spend ..a while.. going through my books, magazines & back to Ravelry to see what options have I. Another hour gone.

I wind the alpaca. I decide to order and download the vest. I discover its not downloadable in the first place.
why? and...now what to knit?

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I am loving Francis , but this yarn creates a very different garment than the drapey alpaca modeled in the pattern. Light bulb goes on! I'll dedicate my 850 yards to another Francis, with a contrasting stockinette hem & cuff edge, in place of the seed stitch.

All this thinking & fussing left me with no time Monday to finish work or knit.
Tuesday, I grab the large almost finished Francis after all, as well as the wound alpaca. On board, my conscience gets the better of me and I spend the WHOLE TRIP DOWN working on my laptop, editing and processing the projects I neglected while thinking of what to knit on the train. I do not knit. I also work most of the way home and knit for, like, an hour. Painful, isn't it?


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Union Station, Washington DC. (and it was 70 degrees out! yayy!)
GZUCKERstough0209_  337 What I was doing in DC was way more interesting than all this blather of what was in my brain the day before I left. I'll share tomorrow. Hint: red. and scarf.

7 comments:

livnletlrn said...

I always bring about 10 times more knitting than is possible to do on any given trip too. Just in case. :-) I adore the colorway of your sweater. Fabulous.

Turtle said...

we're all guilty of the xtra knitting in the lugage! At first glance i would have swore it was a Wicked sweater in the works. loving the colorway

Carole Knits said...

I've done that sort of planning only to not even knit, too. I bet you had a great time in DC.

Bullwinkle said...

I've got to delurk to chime in: been there, packed that; knit some.

I consider it a good luck charm. (Yarn is light and if packing extra ensures smooth travel, I'm there.)

Only once, in my 30 odd years of knitting (and extreme travel) have I had to break into the "emergency project".

p.s. Love the color of that sweater.

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on getting the work done, it will make the knitting later that much more relaxed. And the sweater is really, really looking great.

Archiknist said...

I brought a half knit scarf, a half knit pair of socks, and yarn for 2 more pairs of socks on a 4 day trip... I'm not going to be home till 10:30 tomorrow... any chance I can knit the remaining 1 3/4 pairs of socks by then?

Anonymous said...

The sweater is coming along beautifuly!