Obsession Confession

I have been wholly caught up in Autumn Rose. Until Sunday morning* all my free time (not including commutes) had pretty much been devoted to working on Autumn Rose. This is not to say that the knitting has been smooth sailing, no, unfortunately, I stumbled. This sweater requires many color changes. As I knit each of the sleeves, I always double checked the color name when I made a switch. As I knit the body to the sleeve join, I double checked the color names when I made a switch. It seems though that when I joined the sleeves to the body I must have become arrogant and not double checked the color names. Do you see a difference in these two photos?

I used the wrong color for the darker section. I used a browner red than I was supposed to. When I discovered the mistake I thought, very seriously, about leaving it as is. The color difference is not drastic (unless the 2 colors are right next to each other) and frogging hundreds of tiny stitches seemed too depressing. I thought for a minute, then pulled my size 2 needle out of the sweater and started to pull out 9 rows of knitting. When it was all torn out I went to work (the rest of the day pretty much followed the pattern for the morning).

When I returned home on Friday I really didn't want to start to put hundreds of tiny stitches back onto the needles, but I made myself slog on. I knew that if I didn't Autumn Rose would never be done. After I finished 2 rows I got back into the swing and the obsession returned. Eventually I went to sleep. When I woke up on Saturday I immediately resumed knitting. New trouble appeared to be brewing though, my last skein of Old Gold (the tan/brown color in the above photos) was nearly used up. Would I have enough? No, I didn't have enough. I knit like mad all through Saturday and into the wee hours of Sunday morning. I finished all of the sweater but the collar. My Old Gold lasted to that point, but with only about a foot of yarn left over. Now, I am paused in my Autumn Rose obsession. I am sending 6 unused skeins of yarn back to the on-line vendor where I purchased the yarn, and then they will send me the one skein of Old Gold that I need to finish Autumn up.

*By Sunday morning I am referring to 2 am, which technically is Sunday morning and not still Saturday. Those who know me outside of the blog know that I generally turn into a pumpkin MUCH earlier than that.

Time to Flash the Fos:

December 4:

My sweater for today is Lace & Tuck by Shirley Padden (if I remember correctly) from IK. This is made using 100% alpaca, Inca Alpaca, I believe. It was sport weight yarn, and there are two pieces to this garment, the big cowl like piece comes off. I made this sweater in late '05/early '06. The problem with using 100% alpaca is that the yarn had little to no memory, this mostly effects the elbow area since the sweater was not knit with negative ease. I don't remember how much ease there is in the sweater. I like this sweater and had fun making it, it moved along pretty quickly and was a nice practical use of lace (I have way too many shawls and I hardly ever use shawls). If you are curious about my previous posts on this you can find them here.

Hello, everyone, it's K here. My December 4th FO is Rusted Root:



Yes, it's a goofy photo of me, but the sweater looks good! That's all that matters, right? This is another one of my successes (the failures come later in the month...SO not looking forward to wearing some of those monstrosities. The relevant details about the project can be found here. This is a top that I wear a lot. It fits well, is comfortable, hasn't stretched out at all and can be dressed up or down. The wool in the Cotton Fleece has fuzzed up a little, which surprised me, but it still looks good and is going strong.