knitting funk

Sorry, kids, I've been in another knitting funk. Here's the story: I have been knitting happily away on my grey tweed cardigan only to discover, as I was finishing the EDGING!, that it was just way too big for me to think about wearing. It was more a maternity sweater... and I'm not planning on having children EVER. (knock wood)

So Lack of Safety Culture, the aforementioned tweedy abomination, is temporarily shelved while I figure out if/when I want to rip and resize and reknit. I need to finally learn the all-important What Size My Body Is lesson. Knowing my measurements seems only to get me into trouble. And I think I might be done with sweaters, save for the sweater-yarn I've already bought. (Yeah right!) But really, socks are the way to go. Do I love socks or what!

The night I decided to put LofSC out of my mind, I cast on for an impromptu stash-busting felted yoga-mat bag. I have been needing a bag for El Matto since I began taking the bus to the yoga studio across town. (I've been trying to live a more "car-free" life for years, although I've slipped recently since the cold weather has made bus-stop-haunting a chilly, unfriendly experience.) I found a pile of Patons Classic Merino behind my bedroom door the other day (seriously, where did it all that come from? apparently not from some actual project) and decided that a huge felted bag would be a good way to use the yarn. It's not a very portable project, as there are seven different balls involved in the "random" stripe sequence, and since I'm carrying the yarns up the side of the work I'm also carrying the seven balls around with me.

Thus, I was forced to cast on for a more handbag-friendly project last night, since I was due to watch the Duke-UNC game at an undisclosed plasma-screened location. There was no WAY I was going to sit through a college b-ball game without some sort of knittiness to keep me happy. Let's get this straight: whatever you are forced to do repeatedly as a child is something that you have a distaste for in your adult life. I spent my childhood in a college town, and was dragged to countless dirty, crowded, loud, and unendearing sports events. That having been said, I also do not wish to pass up an opportunity to watch the Tarheels see victory only to have it snatched from their hot little hands. I have only one college b-ball allegiance: I root for the folks playing against UNC. I guess if I really hated UNC so much I'd move away from this town, but the fact of the matter is that I love this town THAT MUCH that I won't even let some rinky-dink university spoil its relative splendor. [To quote (roughly) Former Lurker Gali's BF: "I think college basketball is for JERKS."]

UNC LOST! And I got a good two inches going on my first Jaywalker sock. I know, there are now two types of citizens of Bloglandia: those who are wild about Jaywalkers and those are rabidly against them. What this really means is that there are those who don't mind that they are following one of the hugest fads to hit the knitting communtiy, and those who think that fads are for JERKS. Agent Gray herself tried to dissuade me from making Jaywalkers out of my Socks That Rock yarn *because* the pattern is such a trendy thing, but I cannot be swayed! This yarn begged me every night to use it for Jaywalkers, and I think I should be burnt at the stake if I ever failed to listen to my own yarn. So, Jaywalkers it is, and the yarn and the pattern are so sympatico that I have zero doubt that I made the right choice.

So, one of these days there will be some pretty daylight and I will take pictures of the above knitted goods. Stitches galore! In the meantime, I will play OBSESSIVELY with my new iPod, a.k.a. the New Love of My Life. Is it legal to marry an iPod?