Greenjeans: Now with cables!

This is the fun part. I really do like doing the cables, which are far easier than I had ever imagined. And I have no shame in admitting that I get giddy every time I've added at new twist to the cables. Joy in the small things, for certain.


Related: I stayed up into the wee hours of this morning updating my Ravelry account. I have most of my projects on there with pictures and notes. The site may be more addictive than the knitting itself, but it is an incredibly useful tool. How else would I find over one thousand other knitters who have completed or are in the middle of completing the very cardigan you see above? I'm in awe.

Go. Join. I'm washedup. Who are you?

Greenjeans: an update.

It is becoming more and more apparent to me that I actually am knitting a sweater. A plus size sweater, at that. And that is certainly something. I brag not. I myself can't believe that I'm making this thing appear on the needles. Off the needles. Wherever. Here is an off-needle picture. I did (successfully) try it on, but the pajama pants and general unkemptness told me I was not a model today.



I don't believe the color is accurately represented here. While I know the color is indeed called olive, it's not so olive drab in person. It's far happier -- with a hint of yellow, even. Oh, and the periwinkle business is just waste yarn keeping everything from unraveling until I come back and pick it all up. So, no. It isn't going to be a sleeveless, bare-midriff number.

Still to come: Ribs and cables to the bottom, three-quarterish sleeves with rib-and-cable cuffs, and a ribbed button band and collar. I wasn't feeling too bad about the future of the project until I picked up Knitting Rules today for some between-row reading, and the Yarn Harlot made me fear the button band for reasons I don't yet understand. And she told a horror story about a green cardigan. Great.

The truth is this: I've probably made too much progress. "This is a knitalong, not a race," says Kim, the knitalong ring leader. Oops. I've even done a few rounds of cables since taking this picture, which testifies to how much I really do not want to do all that planning for school. And I have some serious planning to do, considering the three-week KTIP marathon staring me down.

I am a very productive procrastinator.

Greenjeans.

This is more than a lifeless blob. It is the beginnings of a cardigan. An actual sweater.



To see a completed and smaller version in a different color yarn of a different fiber, click here.

I'm knitting mine in Vanna's Choice Olive, which is acrylic and afforable, which I may regret for its texture, but this is my first sweater. I didn't exactly want to buy that delicious forty-dollar-a-skein alpaca just so I could mess it up.

So far, I've only forgotten to increase one stitch on one row. I don't think that's going to result in total lopsidedness -- yet. I keep thinking about how, when they were building the arch in St. Louis from the bottom up, they couldn't be a fraction of a degree off, or it wouldn't have met properly at the top. But I have to keep telling myself, This is a cardigan, not a landmark.

It's only right.

My guess is that I pull this one out about once every .87 years. But I'm no mathematician.

current clothing: The long-sleeved gray shirt that I got at Goodwill to take to Honduras and these four-sizes-too-big Christmas pajamas pants that I shamelessly wear year-round.

current mood: Productive, apparently. Not productive productive. But just wanting to do something.

current taste: The aftertaste of a peppermint mocha truffle. Christmas clearance at Wal-Mart.

current hair: Curly, verging on frizzy. And close to needing a trim. I'm not used to getting my hair done more often that once every six months.

current annoyance: I've been sitting in this wooden kitchen chair for far too long now, and well, my butt hurts.

current smell: *sniff sniff sniff* Nothing (a la Yukon Cornelius). Actually, I keep thinking I smell caramel apples, but I must be making that up.

current thing you ought to be doing: Oh, this is easy. Updating grades. Planning Monday. Planning Tuesday. Planning the semester.

current jewelry: Big ol' earrings I got at Lane Bryant when I was eight dollars away from another discount bracket. I'm wearing these only because I managed to lose one of those silly earrings for which I paid way too much when I was distraught over losing one of my copper Bell's Drug Store earrings. O, the despair! Ahem, and my teacher watch. I'd be willing to bet that in all the instances of filling out this survey, I've never listed a watch here. My, how things change.

current book: I have a stack a mile high beside my bed, but truth be told, I'm only really trying to read Making a Literary Life right now. The first chapter calls upon the reader to write one thousand words a day, and I haven't managed to do it two days in a row. I feel like a fraud picking up the book to read Chapter Two.

current refreshment: I'm fresh out of my new invention, Tangerale. It's a glass of ginger ale with about two-thirds teaspoon Tang. Ay, que rico.

current worry: That I'll be unprepared for the last day of last semester and the first day of next semester, also known as Monday and Tuesday.

current crush: The cashier at Hobby Lobby. He's probably either a husband or a high schooler. Or homosexual. So it goes.

favorite celebrity: Hmm, I find this one more and more difficult to answer as the years pass. John Green? I don't know.

current longing: For one more week before school starts back. Just one? Aw, c'mon...

current music: Nada. My computer can't handle the internet and a music player.

current wish: That out-of-state tuition for master's degrees wasn't so exorbitant.

current lyric in your head: "You'll learn to hate me / But still call me baby"

current makeup: Physician's Formula that needs to be washed off.

current undergarments: This would require actually checking. This much I know: I am wearing some.

current regret: Not doing all of my teacherliness earlier in the break.

current desktop picture: Party lights on the camper. From several summers ago.

current plans for tonight/weekend: Tomorrow is Sunday, and by necessity, I will be a teacher in preparation for the coming days.

current cuss word du jour: Today? I think I'm clear today.

current disappointment: Hm, Sissy, Victoria, Kathryn, and I saw Tale of Despereaux today. It was a cute movie, but not exactly what I expected it to be.

current amusement: Looking at AT&T to see which features everyone on our plan has.

current IM/person you're talking to: One is the loneliest number.

current love: My bedroom. I rigged up some paper lantern garden lights over my mirror. It's all about the lighting.

current obsession: It might be safe to say that I'm not totally obsessed with anything at the moment. Knitting may have taken the prize just a few days back, though. I've found my balance.

current thing or things on your wall: The only actual thing that's not just scooted up or leaning against my bedroom wall is a little "antique" shelf that just happened to be the perfect height to hold DVDs.

current favorite book: I'm never good with this question. I did, about a month ago, decide who my favorite authors are: C. S. Lewis, Madeleine L'Engle, Anne Lamott, and John Green.

current favorite movie: Driving Lessons is still holding on for the win. Though I did just rewatch Love Actually for Christmas, and that cast just couldn't get any better. I like the Brits, apparently.

Bandwagons, ho!

It may not last for another twenty seconds, but I am -- watch me screw this lingo up -- twittering. Tweeting? Oh, what is it? Am I now so old-fashioned that I shouldn't be allowed a login on the website?

By way of being old-fashioned... I got organized last night. Well, with my yarn, at least. I bought one of those dorm closet shoe organizers at Big Lots and then Roy G. Biv-ed my yarn. My shoes, mind you, are piled up and pairless at the bottom of the closet and so they shall remain.

Who knew I had so much yarn? And this set-up doesn't even include my whites, blacks, grays, and browns. Nor the in-use, recently in-use, or soon-to-be in-use skeins. Just as with books, I buy more before I can read (or knit) what I've got. *sigh*

Here's to seven years -- some more interesting than others -- in the archive list.