I've smiled and nodded so many times when people talk about how knitting is good for stress, quitting smoking, quitting fingernail-nibbling, keeps your brain engaged, etc....all true, definitely. But then there are those of us who knit, then want to punch something very hard, or have a smoke along with a cocktail - we need something to help us de-stress from knitting. I'm referring, specifically, to my ripping out an entire sleeve of my Knotty sweater, just as I was about to bind off at the top. I'm always telling people to LOOK at their knitting so they catch mistakes soon after they've happened, yet I managed to get all the way to the top of the sleeve without noticing that....well I won't disclose all. Let's just say that I was a bonehead. I may have to throw a party when I finish this sweater.
I need a wee tiny free pattern project for the newsletter. All of my ideas seem sort of lame today. I'm trying to get Josh to write down his pattern for the felted caterpillar pincushion he made me. It came on a carved wooden leaf, and had a little leaf-shaped card with a tiny bite out of it. It's the cutest darn thing I've ever seen, with the possible exception of the photo of the baby muskox in the latest issue of Wild Fibers magazine. And my pinworm is handy, it holds pins like a champ!

Oh, #$%%! If I had a dime for every time I've joined a new ball then merrily knit across with the end....
I'm still having a little love affair with cables. Is it just a crush, or will it be a lifelong relationship?
I'm supposed to be working on the class schedule, but instead I'm working on my Berroco thing. I say thing because it could - and is supposed to be - a wrap but could conceivably be a fairly wide scarf. I'm liking the yarn (Keltic) quite a bit - this colorway is very fall-y. Not that I really want to think too hard about fall yet. Mainers have a peculiar way of enjoying the summer - it's not a devil-may-care rapturous abandon sort of thing, but a bittersweet pleasure - you admit that it's a glorious day, but follow it up with something mildly grim along the lines of 'better enjoy it while it lasts' just so no one thinks that you're not aware of how brief it is.
Got half my Knotty sleeve done this weekend on the drive up to Tenants Harbor. Am having some qualms that finished sweater will be too small for me. My sister-in-law, who is tiny, has hinted that that would be fine with her. But with all of the ripping and reknitting it would be tragic if I had to give it away! Here's one of the things that had me ripping - for the neckline decreases, you were supposed to stay in pattern. The pattern is a repeating v-shaped, or fanlike, motif with knotlike cables at intervals. At the point in the pattern where you decrease for the neck, the whole piece is fairly narrow, which means that there are only two fan shapes, one of which is nibbled away as the neckline happens. To make it work, you have to make some choices about where to actually stay in pattern and where not to, and it's kind of confusing. Plus - I don't know if this happens to you - I got into the Trance. It's what I call this phenomenon which happens when I am decreasing at intervals, sometimes on both sides of the piece, with some binding off - I start it, space out, realize that I've done something wrong, try to count back and figure out where I was, get confused, get annoyed, rip out. Repeat ad nauseum. Can't walk away from it, can't stay focused enough to do it correctly. It happens on a smaller scale when I'm casting on - I rarely count right the first or even second time. It's like the minute I start couunting, my brain says "this is boring, I'd rather be thinking about something else".
Anyway, Knotty sweater is a long narrow cardigan meant for a long narrow person - not a short one with big bazoombahs. It's occurring to me that the knots may be injudiciously placed for someone with my 'figure', as my grandma would say - what if they dangle like big woolly national-geographic-style nipples?
Gotta go.