My already beloved ivory cardigan is essentially finished — just waiting for me to have time to sew on the pockets and buttons — so you should be seeing it here soon. Doing the finishing on a voluminous cardigan didn’t sound like a good road-trip project when we were packing up for the recent family extravaganza, so instead I used the drive time to cast on my Cline sweater in Junegrass.* I’m so happy to finally be knitting myself a plain grey sweater, and to have this incredible yarn in my hands.
Through an act of kindness, I got to try on someone else’s Cline while I was in Denver in September, which is what made me a convert to this sweater. (More on that here.) The only change I’ll need to make is that the sleeves were several inches too short for me. They’re rather unusual sleeves, so I need to think through how best to implement a mod, which means I’ve started with the back instead of a sleeve. And as it happens, knitting a big stockinette rectangle has been the perfect thing for me here in the thick of crazy season.
All of that said, I haven’t given up the idea of casting on a big shawl-collar cardigan in a rush — there’s a red-hot debate about it raging in my brain. As I watch our forecast shift from mid-60s to low-40s in the next two weeks, I’m feeling increasingly nervous about having gone from two shawl-collars to none. I know from having knitted it once that I could cast on a Bellows with my blue Harrisville special and be wearing it by New Years’ (if not Christmas), and I would be extremely happy to have it as we roll into January. (The Sourcebook Chunky Cardigan thus being saved for another yarn, another day.) On the other hand, I have so many plates spinning in general right now that I’d rather be finishing things up, not starting new ones. Plus I might be a skein or two short on the yarn for that. Plus I don’t know how the back of my neck and that yarn get along.
Then there’s also the little matter of my planning and swatching for the Log Cabin Knitalong that kicks off in a month and a day. The smart thing to do would be to stick with the Cline and the swatching for the next month, and go straight into my knitalong project. But especially since that means going from stockinette into garter, I have a neurotic urge to cast on some cables in between! Which brings me back to those cable hats, and specifically the Bulletproof Aran Hat.
Decisions, decisions.
*Mine is from last year’s Batch One, no longer available. There’s currently a Batch Two.
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PREVIOUSLY in Queue Check: October 2017
