Sadly, I didn't make it to SAFF, opting instead to spend the week in emergency rooms and doctors' offices. It's no big thing- more medications, more tests, more bother- but I got a fair amount of knitting done, knitting myself a hat, converting new and lapsed knitters in waiting rooms, and finishing woefully neglected old projects.
This sweater, for example; this is my first attempt at making a sweater up off the cuff, begun about seven years ago. This languished, armless, for at least six years; it's made of Handpaintedyarns.com Handspun Bulky. HPW has gorgeous base yarns in infamously unreliable colorways- things are not always as they appear on the website- which is how I wound up with a pinky- green instead of the blueish purples I'd seen and dreamed of on the website. I needs blocking, and overdyeing (and not in that order!), but at least it has arms and all the ends are woven in.
There's something lovely in finishing old projects- remembering what I'd initially loved about them, what frustrated me, why I deserted them- so rarely the objects' fault, and usually a refresher on important knitting lessons past. For example: if the color of a yarn makes you crazy, overdye it before knitting the sweater, because if you don't, you'll just abandon the thing for AGES. But it's a pleasure to revisit this: I can see how new of a knitter I was in my choices here- I'd have gone about my shaping differently today, and I would have made the bottom bit of ribbing longer, too, and the neckline doesn't lay quite right, but it's mine, the first sweater I ever made up by myself, and there's a real sweetness to that.
Currently on the needles is another sweater, knit in two shades of Thirteen Mile Worsted I got for a song at Spinster Yarns- she's closing the shop, and everything is on sale for 40%- 50% off. Here's hoping it takes me less than five- six years to finish this one, eh?
