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Because the Rowan sweater is at the point where I’ve got to pick up stitches and knit the collar, and because that is most decidedly not a portable project, I’m focusing on socks this week.

Isn’t the colorway fabulous?  This is Shibui sock yarn in Orchid.  I am in love.

I also took some time out to knit a square for my Uncle Dick, who learned to knit as a school child during the war in England.  I think it’s incredibly cool that he still knits.  He’s doing a blanket out of six inch squares, knit on the diagonal, so I made one for him.  Secretly, I long to do a blanket like this for us, but I can’t imagine sewing all the squares together.

Finally, I’ll leave you with one last picture.  C-A-S-H-M-E-R-E

I adore this stuff.  It takes up color so amazingly — this is the actual as is photo, not tarted up to saturate the color (this is a minor pet peeve of mine, I find that a lot of yarn sellers do this and then the yarn comes and although it’s pretty and I love it, the colors aren’t richly saturated like they were in the web photo).  Aran weight cashmere.  It’s wonderful.

I have plans to knit myself a hat from this.  If there is any interest (it’s aran weight cashmere, so it doesn’t come cheap) I may add a few skeins in when I stock yarn on Thursday.

It was even worse than I thought it was.  And I thought it was really bad.

For those of you who are joining our saga in progress, I picked up the Rowan Anise sweater, which I had cast aside a couple of months earlier in favor of finishing holiday knitting, while in the grips of a really bad case of the flu.  I was bored.  My temperature was well over 100` and I was taking an interesting cocktail of decongestants and asthma medicine.

Who was I fooling?  Disaster was pretty much a given here, right?

But it was worse than I thought as I struggled out to my local yarn shop with the disaster that was Anise in hand.  I was about one day shy of being better — you know, that feeling when you know that by the next day you’ll be feeling good again?

Let’s review the bad knitting photo.

Mistake one involved length while mistake two involved patterning.  But the blatantly obvious, so stupid that a novice knitter would see it immediately mistake, the mistake the all of y’all were too kind to comment on and that Jamie, the incredibly wonderful woman at my LYS, who patiently helped me reboot the sad mistakes in this sweater, gently pointed out, without even a hint of snarky laughter?  Mistake number three, the major, no hope of ignoring it mistake, was the fact that I, ahem, did the neck shaping on the wrong sides.  Look closely at the picture.  She the four stitch moss stitch border that should be on the meeting inside edges on the front, but is instead out on the side seams?  Enough said?  Jamie was very kind.  She even helped me realize where in the pattern I went wrong (I won’t bore you with the details, let’s just say that knitting both fronts at once, putting them down mid-knit, and knitting sick created the perfect storm).

After an entire day and very late night of re-knitting, Anise was ready to be blocked today.  It still has some problems and I am afraid, as I have been all along, that it is too small despite the fact that my gauge is spot-on.  But it’s pretty.  Those moss stitch panels are a thing of wonder and beauty and blocking really brings this one out.

Sleeves are in progress — two at the same time, since the flu is gone.

And a final note of thanks to Squirt, the cat, who remained happily napping on Ellie’s bed instead of making a beeline for knit items being blocked, which he usually loves to nap on.  I need to make Squirt a bed of Alpaca, his favorite fiber, out of gratitude.

I am a bad knitter.

That inner impulse that says, "oh, go ahead, it will turn out right" is usually wrong.

The Rowan sweater had been pushed aside, in favor of Christmas knitting, for a couple of months.  But it was calling me.  So, midway through a really bad case of the flu, I pulled it out the week of Christmas and finished the fronts.

Looks pretty good, if unblocked, doesn’t it?

The problem?

There are actually two, major problems (I’m not going beyond the big ‘uns).

Problem #1, a little bit hard to see on the picture, is that I can’t count.  Apparently, when the pattern told me to stop on the fronts 8 rows before I stopped to do the neck shaping on the backs, I stopped about 8 rows too early.  As knit, this sweater would likely be a good fit for a hunchback, or maybe not even then.

I spent last night trying to convince myself it wasn’t all that bad and that I could block the fronts into submission.

But, there is also problem #2.  Apparently, while doing the decrease rows, I stumbled out of pattern.  There is a segment where I break out of Moss Stitch and into something, um, else.

I spent last night trying to convince myself this was a charming pattern enhancement.

I really was going to give it a go, knit the sleeves, sew it up, go looking for a new friend with an oddly shaped back and maybe some thick coke bottle eyeglasses.  But I can’t, heaven help me.  It’s really awful.  It’s bad knitting and I’m going to have to rip it out, figure out where the heck the moss stitch pattern and the decreases went south, and make it right.

I’m still in denial about the fact that despite the fact that I got gauge this looks a little bit small for me.  That’s what New Year’s getting back into shape resolutions are all about, right?

In less distressing news, I finished the blues & browns Be Sweet Tea Cozy.

It’s loveliness incarnate, but that is all about the yarn.  This yarn is absolutely wonderful and I have enough stashed to do a sweater for me and a skirt for Ellie this year.

I’ve also made just a wee bit of progress on the Habu Kusha Kusha Scarf.  Just a few more rows.

And, I’ve swatched for a pair of socks for myself in Shibui’s beautiful Orchid colorway which is sort of a riot of Lily Pulitzer Pinks with a touch of green (not any red as it appears in the picture).  I auditioned a couple of different stitches for the ribbing, but am still undecided.  This yarn is so pretty that I think simplicity is going to be the key to these socks.

I have a little bit of good to go with my bad.  But I’m off to bed, going to get lots of sleep and a good headstart so I can figure out what’s wrong with Anise tomorrow.