New Day, New Project

I needed a break from my same old projects. Lately, I have really, truly been trying to work exclusively on projects already in progress in attempt to do something about the piles of half-knitted stuff all over the house (and my car, by the way - hey, you never know when you'll need an "emergency traffic project"). I could feel myself losing momentum on them and yearning to start other things. In particular, I'm dying to start Hudson with my Big Kureyon. I even went so far as to bring one hank into the house from the trunk of my car. Instead, I decided to knit something for my neice. I figured, part of the problem is that I have too many big projects and not enough quick, instant gratification-type projects, so I cast on today for this hoodie. I started at around 8:30, and by 10:30, I had this. You gotta love kid's clothes. Total short attention span heaven. The yarn is Blue Sky Alpacas Cotton in one of their new colors, Azul, which is an absolutely stunning shade of aquamarine. It's going to be breathtaking with my neice's strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes - can't wait to see it. It doesn't look like I'll have to wait long :)

In anticipation of the fact that it may accidentally get machine washed a few times, I decided to machine wash and dry my swatch to see what happened. I have to say that I'm not pleased with the results. I think there was quite a lot of shrinkage and the fibers got pretty mussed up, but after it had time to relax and cool off, it no longer looked completely ruined. I wouldn't let it happen too often, and maybe if you air dried it, it would be a lot better. I just figured putting it through a worst-case scenario situation was a good experiment.

As far as Starsky goes, I'm obviously straying quite a bit. I'm up to the armhole shaping on the right front. I think what's holding me back is the fact that I have to reknit the part of the back where I made my mistake which means ripping back to the armholes. I'm quite tired of this project, and the promise of being able to wear it is fast disppearing as the weather turns warmer, not that San Diego weather was ever well-suited to bulky weight alpaca. I figure by this weekend, I'll have the right front done and the back at least ripped if not partially re-knitted. Then it's all the unpleasantness of blocking, seaming, finishing (including the collar). Yuck! Geez, I sound really whiny about this, sorry. I think in my heart I'm ready to knit summer stuff so I'm getting a little pouty about my winter projects. Tank tops here I come! Btw, did you guys see the IK Summer preview? It looks really amazing. Lots of stuff I'd like to knit. Can't wait!