You know that you've been out of the blogosphere too long

when you have 111 unread entries on bloglines and you don't subscribe to very many blogs in the first place.

Look:

It's proof that I have been knitting (and a photo of Elly's rear end). Unfortunately, I haven't been knitting very much. What you see are four of the six pieces need to make a Dragon Hoodie for Eva. I have been wanting to make this sweater for a long time now, but never got around to it because I could never find yarn that I liked. I finally settled for Plymouth Encore even though the gauge is wrong.

For some reason, this tiny sweater is causing me great anxiety. I ripped out the back (or part of the back) three times for various reasons. I worry that it won't fit Eva because I have no idea how big an 18-month old is. I worry about how the parts are going together (the hood construction is a bit baffling to me). I worry about installing the zipper. Heck, I worry about FINDING a zipper. I worry about making the crocheted poky things to go along the spine. I worry that it will look too plain without the spots. I worry that no one will know that it's a dragon. I worry that the colors aren't right. (I picked red and gold because I thought that Eva should be a Chinese dragon because she's more Chinese than I am. But do people know that Chinese dragons are red and gold?)

To make this sweater even harder on me, I decided to knit the entire thing continental style. Why? To prove to myself that I can do it and to make knitting a mostly stockinette sweater a bit more interesting. I am primarily an English knitter, but I learned to knit two-handed fair isle very early in my knitting career. So, I can easily knit and purl with both hands. However, increasing, decreasing, and binding off continental style are challenging for me. I know the benefits of continental knitting, but boy oh boy is it uncomfortable for me. I think this will be the end of my experiments with continental knitting. That is, until the next time I want to experiment with continental knitting again.

In regular life:
My last day at my job is Thursday. Today, I'm waffling between "I'm so happy!" and "I'm so sad!" I'm happy to escape from the chapters that I have been editing and re-editing for years, but it frightens me that someone else is going to edit my chapters. I guess I can't have it both ways. Meanwhile, I already have two freelance jobs lined up. *Whew!* I'm not unemployed after all.

I'm also entertaining myself with my new computer. It has a built in webcam.


click for giant Scout