ug swatches

I've been an absolute buffoon when it comes to needles, shuttles and yarn these last few weeks. I don't think I should even be allowed near stockinette stitch. Garter stitch, maybe. But anything more complex than that and I keep having this trouble where my brain thinks it should participate and starts telling my fingers to do the wrong thing. Stupid brain.

I blame tiredness. Lack of sleep after a week of stress (good stress - we had visitors).

I've put the tatting aside for a few days due to too much brain hindrance. I thought some nice simple knit swatching would be just the ticket. I think I like Cardigan for Arwen best of the list from yesterday. I don't know if it is for certain what I want to knit, but if I can swatch it to my liking, I'll head down to the yarn shop to see if they have a few more skeins. Also, I think I want it at a looser gage, which means more math, but only a swatch can tell.

As for the pattern, I think that I would change several things about it anyway. For one, I would make a closure, perhaps bone toggles. I currently have a high desire for bone toggles and I think I saw some in a shop recently. If not, I have several deer skeletons in my back woods (I don't know why, I think it's an animal grave yard or something - 3 to 5 deer seem to go there to die each year) which I suppose could be converted. Also, I think I would like to modify how the hood attaches to the sweater. But I'll leave that 'till later.

What went wrong with my swatching? Aside from me getting super frustrated and hushing everyone in the house, I just couldn't get the cable chart to knit up. I couldn't get my head around it. No matter that I tried seven times. No matter that words so unladylike escaped my lips that they could never be repeated here. What happened is this: I read the chart wrong. It's been so long since I've had to read a chart back and forth that my brain wouldn't remember how. I knit in the round so much these days that the concept of reading the chart one direction for one row and the other direction for the other row was completely impossible. Only after vowing to give up knitting and going to bed early did I figure out what was happening. Maybe today will be better.

But just in case, I'm sticking to my gtst shawl and my stst socks for the next little while.