Why yes, I can convince myself of anything

Thanks to everyone for their get well wishes. I’m doing well, back at work and all, and finally wearing regular pants with an actual waistband which is super exciting.

The main lingering side effect seems to be a scorching case of startitis. I’m pretty sure they didn’t mention that in any of the many consent forms I signed, so I’m guessing those forms were not written by knitters.

So, what have I started? Well, a sock…



Standard sock recipe, in Meilenweit Megaboots Stretch Ultra, 72 stitch cast-on, size 2 needles. Lovely. Still totally charmed by the Megaboots’ subtle color shifts, just as I was the last two times I used this yarn.

And a sweater…



The Sienna Cardigan in Berroco Ultra Alpaca, in the smashing Oceanic Mix colorway. I’m knitting the 48” size for my 38” self, to accommodate using yarn with a wildly different gauge than the pattern calls for. Loving it so much.

Besides their obvious inherent charms, why, you may ask, am I working on these instead of one of my (many) existing WIPs, which have many charms of their own?

You see, I’m naturally prone to startitis. The first few inches of a project are almost always pure joy. New yarn is so exciting! Lookit the pretty colors! Wow this is the best pattern EVER!

Then the first flush of infatuation wears off... And I start looking longingly at my Ravelry queue…Lookit! Colorwork! I love colorwork! Maybe some nice colorwork mittens! And oo, what a pretty shawl! And I coud really use a basic stockinette sock to carry around in my bag! And I’ve never made a cabled sweater! And, gosh, I’ve always meant to learn how to embroider tea towels! And…! And…! And…!

You get the picture. It takes enormous self-control not to be knitting the first two or three inches of approximately eleventy million projects simultaneously. I do tend to have at least two or three “active” projects at a time. Which may explain why I rarely actually finish anything. Ahem. Anyway…

Despite this natural (and, I like to think, charming) tendency to abandon projects mid-way, I’ve been plodding along fairly faithfully on my two main projects. But both of them have pissed me off recently. I screwed up the Callisto shawl (again) and need to either frog a few rows or execute some sort of daring lunatic fix in which I drop stitches and fix several rows involving poorly executed YO-SSK combinations. This seems unlikely to turn out well.

Simultaneously, mom’s first sock has been reknit, sans heel and toe (I heart you afterthought heel and the way you don’t break up the color repeats), but I have definitively run out of yarn before knitting either a heel or a toe. So annoyed. More yarn is on the way, but I’m in a fight with this sock right now.

Fiddly shawl fixes and ill-behaved yarn-greedy socks are so not what you need when you’re recuperating, right? What you really need is to cast on a new blue sock with the new wool your awesome coworkers sent you. IMMEDIATELY.

Also, someone that really wanted to relax and get into the spirt of convalescence would probably also start knitting, um, a cardigan. Yeah, that’s it!

Yes indeed. I’m starting new projects For My Health.