martinimade

I have a case of the late summer restlessness. Nothing seems to go quite right, especially when projects tackled require even a tiny bit of my brain. To wit:

I have been on a fingerless mitt kick. No idea why, really, but with the big arsekicking sweater, I seem to need projects I can actually finish in less than a year.

This is the most recent: Dashing. Imagine that that white line is where a thumb bit would go.

Because my goal with these is to use up odds and ends, I'm only using yarn from the "remains of projects past" box. Once I got this one done, I realized that I probably wouldn't have enough to knit all of another mitt. And I was correct.

No matter, thought I. I know I have more of this yarn that hasn't made it into the box, because I just knew it was the yarn from my Nantucket.

Looks pretty close, eh? I thought so, too. But as I started to knit, I realized that the yarn I dug out was a dustier pink than the yarn I'd been using. Still, I knit on -- and just figured that somehow, in the depths of the yarn closet and in its plastic bag, this ball had somehow managed to fade and/or gather enough dust to change its color without changing its texture. And that its time in the stash had somehow made it puffier.

Perhaps, thought I, this ball's exposure to the summer humidity has made it frizzier. I mean, my hair does the same thing in the summer. Why not yarn?

The observant will leap to the correct conclusion, which is that it is a completely different yarn.

The color difference doesn't read in the shot above, but the weight difference does.

Near as I can tell, the yarn I started the mitts in is the same as the yarn I used to knit a Rowan sweater ( maybe -- but I can't find the pattern so maybe it was Debbie Bliss?) for the Diva when she was two. This was in the pre-blog days -- so it's like it never happened at all. The yarn might have been a Rowan 4-ply in some kind of color resembling pink. Or not -- because, clearly, my powers of observation are crap.

What have we learned here?

1) Never underestimate a knitter's ability to ignore the obvious.

2) After you've been knitting for a few years, you can no longer keep track of a) what you've made or b) what leftovers you have.*

3) I have a strange fondness for a particular shade of almost-pink.

4) One completed fingerless mitt and one 3/4 completed mitt do not a gift make. The odds of my finding the yarn to finish the unfinished approaches zero, simply because I don't have the slightest idea what it is. I'd rip them out and start again, but then I might cry. Instead I plan to shove them in the yarn closet until the pain (not pain, really, more intense irritation) is no longer as acute.

The whole episode has left me dejected, so much so that I think I might need a small knitting break. Especially when coupled with this:

It's a hat for the Diva, which I can't finish because I can't find my 5th DP needle in that size. And I keep pulling it out to work on it, then remembering that I can't, then swearing loudly and moving it to another corner of my desk.

Only just now, as I pulled it out to take a picture, did the obvious solution dawn on me. I could move some stitches around and knit it with four needles. Or, you know, buy another set.

What I'm going to do is put it away for a bit because, clearly, my knitting judgment is not to be trusted.

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* There may be people who are far more organized than I. Those people are more than welcome to come impose order. And if you could impose retroactive order, I will bake you a pie.