Whoa…that don’t look right…

Over the weekend, I worked on the baby sweater for the boss’ impending arrival. The first two-thirds is just straight stockinette stitch – nice and fast.

Then I began shaping the yoke of the sweater. I read the destructions about sixteen times. I went online to see if anybody had put out a correction on them. They made next to no sense to me. Wait. Work two rows even and then bind off 6? Are you sure, Debbie? That sounds…kinda mental. I mean, I know you’re a Famous Designer© and all, and I’m just, uh, me, but I’m just not feeling where we’re going here...

But, being that I have done…counting this one…uh…{counts on fingers}…precisely…zero Fair Isle cardigans, I finally decided to just take my good friend Debbie’s word for it and plunge on. I misquoted the words of my beloved Yarn Harlot to myself: “Be afraid of bungee jumping…be afraid of tigers…be afraid of bear markets…be fearless in knitting…”

As often happens, it became (mostly) clear as I went on. I did the first side with great reservation. I did the first half of the back with slightly less trepidation. And then, as the overall garment began to resemble a jester’s hat, I realized where we were headed.

All of which is graphic illustration as to why I didn’t opt for a career as an architect – I can’t see things in my head very well. I need them to be more or less right in front of me before I can grok them.

But now, I’m obsessed. I have to work on this tonight, and get it past the current stage. Because it just don’t look right, and it is bugging me.

It looks like a jester’s hat that has been sliced open and laid flat – four spiky bits, with scoops between them. The four spiky bits will be grafted together to become shoulders, and then the yoke of the sweater is picked up and worked from the cast-off edges. At which point, it should hopefully cease to look like a malformed jester’s hat and become an adorable little baby sweater for the Impending Arrival.

At least, that’s the idea. I’m pretty sure. But I’m still not 100% convinced that this thing is going to work out as planned. I already had one catastrophe when the yarn arrived and the ‘brown’ was actually ‘mustard’. No lie. The color on my computer was brownish, and the name is ‘harvest’, but the color in person? Mustard. Eeeeeeeeeew! It would have been OK as an accent color, but as the main color it was right out.

Fortunately and after a little frantic digging in the boxes of ‘too much to throw away, not enough for a project’ leavings, I found a nice soft warm gray wool of ‘close enough’ content in my stash which goes well with the other colors and I was back in business.

Only to be hit with this. The deformed jester’s hat. Yes, yes, I know, I know. I’m going to seam the shoulders and pick up the stitches and it will be a sweater. But right now, it says to me only, “I would make an excellent jester’s hat. A little starch, a little seam, and I’m perfect for the Depressed Gray-Wearing Jester…you could stitch little bells on my edges…ting-a-ling-ling, who’s there, the Depressed Jester…!”

I can’t stand it. After I’ve cleaned the kitchen (again) and picked up the toys (again) and put away all the clothes currently strewn for Reasons Unknown all over the Den (AGAIN!), I’m going to get busy on picking up that yoke.

At which point I will undoubtedly discover that my 'teal' is actually 'turquoise' and there'll be a hex on the whole thing...