wip it, wip it good

Way back when the Spring 2007 issue of IK came out, I quickly cast on for the dollar and a half cardigan using Adrienne Vittadini’s discontinued Marissa (70% Pima Cotton, 30% Silk, 5 stitches to the inch for any googlers). I made it almost through the back and then found a mistake. A big ugly mistake that I had to fix. My neurosis runs deep. After ripping back, I knit, ripped, re-knit, ripped, re-knit, ripped some more. It was an endless cycle of making the same mistake over and over and over. In a fit of complete frustration, I said fuck it and frogged the whole thing and stuffed the yarn back into storage. The whole thing needed some serious time out. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a hard stitch pattern, there is nothing too terribly confusing about it and I do find it to be lovely — I just can not count to three.

Just this past weekend, I decided to start knitting the cardigan again and am working on the sleeves, both at the same time, with cute kitty stitch markers from the wonderful Cheryl so that I keep the increases and pattern separate. So far, my counting hasn’t been off *fingers crossed* and I’m blaming the stitch markers, in a completely good way.

Sleeve knitting has commenced.Would you like to know more of my knitting neurosis? I am beginning to believe that a sweater project simply will not work if I don’t start with the sleeves. My past three very successful sweaters were knit sleeves first. My attempts at knitting a few sweaters since I finished Salina (I’ll hopefully post about it someday - one of the three successful sweaters) have been full of more frustrations that I’d care to mention, and all have been started back first. Do any of you knitters out there have any knitting superstitions or neurosis?

And now, a few pictures of the bird-watching star of this here blog.

y’all know what looks tasty? yarn stuffed birds. mmmmm.