Castaway

Sleeve Island, what a lonely place to be.

So little left to do on this Cotton Sweater of Many Ends


And yet, picking it up to knit some more rounds of a sleeve feels a bit like running away from the Thing behind the door in a dream. My hands move slowly, and surely a sweater this size shouldn't weigh 25 pounds! The weight of resistance burdens every stitch.

And yet, I do want it done, and the deadline for county fair entries looms. What to do?

Well, I did finish some spinning.



And how I miss the good camera, which is hurt and out of commission right now. Turned out I got about 500 yards of singles from the Grafton Fibers batt. Once they were skeined up, I washed and shocked them with agitation and repeated plungings from hot to cold water so that they'd be slightly-fulled. I don't trust my singles spinning that much yet.

Even with the rotten pictures, perhaps you can tell why I can't wait to get this knit up into something. This yarn wants, I believe, to be a warm, squishy hat. Exactly which warm, squishy hat is still in debate.


I must not be the only spinner who waffles about finding the Right Pattern to complement finished yarn. Commercial yarn doesn't carry the weight that handspun does for me. I've loved every one of my few handspun knitting adventures, so I probably should get going.


Once I finish 4.6 sleeves, that is.

Read. The. Pattern.

Cheerfully resurrected Odelia by Julie Weisenberger to simply finish off the sleeves and voila, have a sweater for summer.

Except, eight inches ago, I neglected to continue the edge decreases.

Guess I'll just rip that puppy right out to the point where I left the pattern to wander in the wilderness and redo it the right way.

Grrrrr.

Thank goodness the high school team won States again! Seven years of domination sort of make up for redoing eight inches of sweater.

Sort of.

Should've made it longer

. . . although I barely made the deadline as it was. Seriously cute, even if it's too short.

This almost makes up for the three sweaters stuck on Sleeve Island.