It’s a vicious cycle. I’ve been sleeping badly, for a variety of reasons. Monday and Tuesday night there was some Carnaval noise; also on Tuesday my mother (still a little unclear on time differences) called right as I was falling asleep. Last night it was extra bright outwide our bedroom window; we thought they’d turned on some additional streetlights and it was only in the morning I found out that we must have accidentally turned on our balcony light. I took my Tuesday morning off exercise after our Monday night class (followed by the less usual Monday night brief bar crawl, to see Carnaval in full swing, then took yesterday morning off due to short sleep. (As did Rudder, but he’d erged the evening before.) I think the two days off working out were most of why I didn’t sleep well last night, because the balcony light wasn’t bright enough to be very annoying with eyes closed.
Rudder pointed out that the other handy side effect of exercise is that it forces hydration. I must have been behind on water, because I ended up downing an entire 24 oz bottle during and after this morning’s erg session. I don’t know if that may have interfered with sleep too.
The sweater I’m knitting continues apace; the yoke is done and I’m halfway through one sleeve. I decided not to put a cable design down the front, after realizing that it’s not really possible to center a 15-stitch-wide Celtic cable on a 2×2 rib that’s not centered itself in front. (That is, at the point of the V-neck there’s 2 purls to the left, 2 knits to the right. I thought about putting the cable down the sleeves instead, since exact centering would be less of an issue there (I’d have increased one stitch to give me odd numbers, so the cable was flanked by matching ribs on either side.) Ultimately, I decided not to, since the point of this sweater was to have something that wasn’t too complex to knit on drives or during class.
I don’t want to add different ribbing at the neck; I was hoping to leave it completely plain, but it’s too ragged for that – probably my own fault for not thinking to slip the first stitch on non-increase rows. I’ll either add a slim attached i-cord or crochet an edging. The latter is fast, but I think i-cord might look better. I had been planning to flare the sleeves, but am not sure now. If I do, the ribs pull together enough that I think I’ll need to add quite a few stitches to get a noticeable flare. However, it’s a worsted-weight smooth wool in a 2×2 rib, and might just be too chunky for a flared sleeve to look good. (Opinions welcome on all of this.)
It’s also getting a bit bulky to carry in my purse. I could cast on a sock to have a portable project, but considering class and the car are my prime knitting times, I’d never get the sweater done that way. I may ust suck it up and take an extra bag along for it.
That’s why my Meadow Flowers shawl has languished so – I can only knit on it when I can pay attention, which is fairly rare. (Also, I was an idiot and didn’t use lifelines, resulting in tediously tinking back about 8 rows of lace. Ugh. But that’s done and I even reknit them so now it’s ready to progress in a forward direction.)
My other stalled project is a bit more problematic; it’s a case of the wrong yarn for the project. I love the yarn, and like the pattern, but they don’t play well together. The yarn is a gorgeously soft merlot-colored alpaca blend; the pattern is the very pretty Trellis and Vine from Magknits. The problem is that the yarn’s a bit too yielding to really show off the pattern well; I think it needs something smoother and sturdier like the cotton blend the pattern calls for. On the other hand, the yarn’s fuzzy enough to be difficult to rip back, and I’ve gotten about two feet done. It doesn’t look bad, just not as good as the example, so I’ll probably suck it up and just finish it some day. And then figure out what to do with it, since I have a Clapotis shawl in similar yarn already (that’s been perfect for dealing with varying office temperatures). I suppose there’s nothing really wrong with having one dark red shawl for home and one for the office, especially as it’s a great color for me and not so good for any of the female people I’d be likely to give such a labor-intensive project to. (The husband, father, or brother could wear it, but I don’t think any of them is a big fan of shawls.) There are possibilities in Rudder’s extended family, I suppose – if I ever get enough of it done for its disposal to be an issue.