I've been on a crash course, heading straight into the end of the semester for the past few weeks. Crit week is 13 days away and I've been in the studio cranking out as much work as possible. I still have a long way to go, but I'll get there.



The sleeve for the zipped raglan is just about done. I want to knit it a few inches longer so it will cover my long monkey arms, but that won't take any time at all. I was really hoping to get this sweater finished by Thanksgiving, but that may not be entirely possible. My entire family is coming from Hotlanta to visit us next week, so hopefully I'll be able to get all of the knitting on the sweater done before school starts the next Monday.

I bought some yarn for my winter hat today to replace the Mountain Goat of easter egg brilliance.



It's malabrigo and the shade is called Autumn forest (224). While yes, it's varigated, the colors are so muddy one would be hardpressed to call it unmanly. I need to find a good pattern for it. I'm thinking the Army Girl Earflap Hat from Interweave knits. (I really tried to get the link to work and it was ugly. Trust me.) Mine, however will just be the Army Earflap Hat, 'cause that's how I roll. I need to knit a swatch to see if I should double my yarn or not. I really don't want to have to buy new needles, but I may just have to bite the bullet.

What will happen with the Mountain Goat, you ask? I think it'll end up being a pair of socks for my mom. We'll see if I can knit a pair in the 8 days between the end of the semester and Christmas. Oh the joys of holiday knitting.

Speaking of the holidays, I bought some ornaments for our first Christmas in Chicago.



They're made out of what I assume to be tiny gourds. The owl belongs to Andrew and this one is mine:



That is a wild-eyed panda if I ever saw one.

Zen. Well, Not Yet

I found a copy of Bernadette Murphy's Zen and the Art of Knitting in a used book store the other day (as well as A Guide for the Jewish Homemaker from 1956, which I also bought, but I digress). It's been my subway reading for the past week or so and I must say, it is enthralling. For the past few years I've definatly been what one could call a product knitter. I stress over how well I can knit something and how fast it gets done. No matter how fat the yarn is or how simple the pattern, I always find myself racing for the finish line with white knuckles and my naturaly colorful dialect erupting from between my cleched and grinding teeth. Either that, or I abandon a project in the second half if it's not going as fast as I want it to.

I realized this morning that it's been 10 days since my last post (horrors!) and how while I've been knitting, I didn't have much to show for it. I found my sweater stopped halfway through a row and on the first row of a new stripe. While this would normally infuriate me to no end (I'm a really laid back guy, I just seem to have some completely misdirected yarn rage issues) I just picked it up to finish my row and and continued worrying about the fact that in just two years I would be jobless, and 100k in the hole. When I noticed that I was knitting a sweater out of $15 balls of wool while stressing about money, I laughed. Hard.

I looked at my big pile o' wool and wondered how I was able to afford all of the yarn for this sweater when three years ago I considered buying lambspride a luxury. I remembered that Andrew bought me a ball for our first Valentines Day, and I bought three more in the same color with a gift certificate I got for my birthday. Two balls came from a day I aced a Botany exam and so on.
While normally I try to avoid the corny, the wistful and the hopeful, I had an ephiphany. A lot of small steps go a long way. My knitting will get done. My work will get done. The house cleaning probably won't get done ( let's be honest here).

Okay. that being said, Here's where I'm at on the sweater:



Here's the yarn:



Oh knitting, you are wise and have many lessons to teach us.

What's Next?

Alright, the second glove is moving along a wee bit slower than the first and Bob is, ahem, taking a breather as my feeble brain can't handle the ever changing amount of yarn strands that grace his beautiful face right now. So, I will show you yarn for my next few projects. Note: I am a deceptively slow knitter so please ignore the dust on the yarn.

First we have some Rowan Big Wool in Best Brown.



This will be a cardigan of some type to keep Andrew's skinny ass warm in Chicago. I'm betting I can knit this sucker in a week.

Next we have my new winter sweater.



This is about 11-12 balls of Manos in color 108. It will be a zip up raglan from Last Minute Knitted Gifts. I'm super stoked about this because I've had half of the yarn for about 3 years and now my plan for my first sweater that I'm not embarrassed to leave the house in is almost complete.

The next collection of yarn is much more speculative in nature.



It's 8 balls of sport weight alpaca that have no intended purpose whatsoever. For some reason I have a tendency to buy single balls of sport weight alpaca just because. I don't get it either. Anyway, I know that I'm a big fan of the solid dreary man-colors, but I was thinking that this could be the start of a really great Kaffe Fasset-esque sweater, much like this one...



Too Heathecliff Huxtable? I don't know. I figured it would be perfect for a baby sweater but the only baby I know lives in San Diego and what freak in their right mind knits a baby sweater out of alpaca? (Note: if you happen to be knitting a baby sweater out of alpaca, I'm totally not talking about you.) Do I really want to knit a sweater in sport weight that I will probably never wear? Maybe I'll find a new friend with really bad taste. Let's hope.