Needed: Brains

Something is amiss lately... Not sure what it is, but my mind feels a bit moldy. Take my Leaf Tee for instance. Last week, I noticed I was down to my last ball of yarn, yet the top was only a couple inches past my boobs. There is no way that one ball would make more than 4" or so of the top, but I kept going. I should not have. I should have thought about it more, and decided that maybe knitting a bit too tight had become a big problem. A big yarn consumption problem.

When I started, I didn't even check my gauge because it was a top-down raglan, and I thought it wouldn't really matter. I must have been stressed out when I started the project, because my stitches were pretty tight. Of course, I didn't even notice for a week or so (when less stressed), and by then I thought it was easier to just keep going tightly, rather that rip it out. MISTAKE! I now have a shirt that barely reaches my belly-button, and I'm all out of yarn. And to make this worse (and actually quite embarrassing), I thought I could fix it. Yup. When I got to that last ball, I thought, "Maybe if I loosen up a little, the yarn will stretch further and it'll be okay." So what I actually have is a top that barely reaches my belly-button, and flares out considerably in the last few inches. Very flattering indeed!

There are no pictures of my shame. It is condemned to a cheap plastic bag, where it will remain until my memory fades. Then I will frog the whole thing, and redo it. I really liked the pattern and yarn, and dammit I'm going to finish this thing if it kills me. And hopefully next time I won't also botch the lace panel in two places- I blame that on the half-empty bottle of amaretto in my kitchen. Lucky for me, looser gauge = less stitches = will go faster this time.

But for now, I'm turning back to the Hedera socks, on the lovely signature needles. I've got the cuff of this one done, and about half the cuff on the second. I love them.

I'm going to go work on them right now...