Birthday Shenanigans

It's been an interesting birthday weekend, knit-wise. First on Friday, I decided to frog the Clapotis. I got to another dropped stitch, and discovered this:


It was the last straw. It looks like I somehow managed to sort of cable the stitches or something. That plus the too-long dropped stitches/wrong needle size, and my growing distaste of the yarn all added up. I just did not enjoy knitting this, and life is short. So it's going away forever! Yay! And while we're on the topic of frogging...

Yesterday I decided to also frog the striped baby blanket. It's slow moving, and it's not that it's hard or anything like that- I'm just incredibly unmotivated and don't want to do it. I'll use some of the yarn to make something quick (perhaps a hat and booties) and be done with it.

It occurred to me that I have all this stash and never use it because I rarely knit for myself. I buy the yarn with a project for me in mind, but then get sidelined knitting for other people (for which I buy new yarn). And in eight years, all I've made for myself are some dishrags, two pairs of socks and a shawl. So my birthday gift to myself is to become a selfish knitter!

And speaking of birthday gifts, Scott took me yarn shopping yesterday. From Knittin' Chicks in Mt. Airy I got:

Six skeins of Cascade Cotton Rich DK

Cascade Heritage Sock in blue and in green (yes, the blue is the exact same yarn I used for the Pomatomus socks- I liked it that much)


And Araucania Ranco, for Scott


Then we went to Eleganza Yarns where I got some more Shalimar Zoe

And a sweater's worth of Jo Sharp Aran Tweed

The Jo Sharp was on sale, so I cleaned out the 14 balls she had on the shelf, with the hopes that it will be enough to make a fancy-pants cabled sweater.

This year I would like to be less lazy with my knitting. I've got a growing desire to stretch my knitty wings and do something more interesting. I have the technical knowledge, so there's no reason not to. Although my skills might not be great (particularly my tension), practice makes perfect, right? So I've made a very general list of things I'd like to tackle:

1. The Bohus Sweater
2. A biggish lace project (shawl, scarf, etc.)
3. A cabled sweater, of the traditional aran variety

There's no real time limit for this list, but my knitterly confidence would like to see each of these projects at least started by the end of the year.

Oh, and the whole yarn-buying-hiatus-until-MDSW? Birthday yarn totally doesn't count- as technically it was a gift from Scott. :)