Sleepknitting

I’m awake!  I’m awake!  This news might not be all that exciting to you, but I am thrilled to be mostly conscious today after stumbling through yesterday on only 3 hours of sleep.  An extremely early Tuesday morning for The Husband meant that I got very little sleep and it showed.  I generally don’t require a huge amount of sleep, but 3 hours is sparse even for me. 

I did manage to drive the 20 miles to my LYS yesterday to pick up the yarn I needed to finish my pretty top-down sweater.  Unfortunately, since I wasn’t really awake, I didn’t get to just hang around and knit like I usually do when I make the journey.  I just kind of sat there for a little while, staring into space.  In a brief moment of awareness, I realized that nothing productive was going to happen, so I went home to try and sleep.  I say “try” because no actual sleeping took place, thanks to the six smelly dachshunds.  If I keep them in the house, they sit at the patio doors and bark at every random squirrel, bird, cat, and leaf that moves.  If I let them out, they bark incessantly at everything and nothing at the same time, which I’m sure annoys the neighbors (I know it annoys me).  So…no sleep.

On the bright side, Monday evening (before exhaustion set in) I actually accomplished quite a bit.  After my blog post that night, I ended up going crazy with the Malabrigo sweater I had started.  I managed to do the three needle bind off (thanks YouTube), although for some reason I was missing a stitch when I picked up from my provisional cast on.  I’m not sure what went wrong but thankfully I’m at the point in my knitting experience that a random missing stitch doesn’t scare me anymore.  Anyway, I did the bind off on the neck and then picked up stitches for the yoke and got a lot done.  While missing a stitch here or there doesn’t bother me, I do seem to have a definite disability when it comes to picking up stitches.  Either I can’t fit all that I need to in the allotted space or I have to pick up more than required in order for there to be no gaps.  For this project, it was the latter problem.  I used the designer’s ratio, but I still ended up needing four extra stitches to make it look right, although I’m not sure how subtle my decrease of the extra stitches in the next row are.  I mean, I can tell where they are but maybe it’s just because I know to look for them.  Thankfully the area in question is at the back of the neckline.  Plus, the sweater is for my daughter-in-law who has long hair.  So in addition to the tag that spells out how to care for the garment, I will be including an additional requirement that she only wear the sweater with her hair down.  See how easy that problem was solved?

Last night, after I got what I won’t go so far as to say was my second wind (more like a pathetic little breeze), I did finish the body on the pretty top-down sweater and started a sleeve.  It was interesting though, when I transferred my sleeve stitches onto two circulars, I must have studied the thing for at least 15 minutes, trying to remember how to knit.  O_O  Seriously, it would have been comical if it weren’t so sad.  When I finally figured out how to start, I got two rows done and then gave up and went to bed at 8.  The knitting kingdom was much better off for it.

Today is a new day and as long as I remain alert, I should get a great deal done.  The status on my Christmas list is now two sweaters done, two others more than half done, another started, and three more yet to begin.  Plus a blanket.  Oh, and I picked up a day job that I start on Monday.  I really didn’t feel like I was under enough pressure to get things done by Christmas, so I decided to remove 40 hours of my time each week from my knitting schedule.  That’s just how I roll.  Actually, I needed the job to support my yarn habit.  At least I’m not out stealing copper…

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Do you have any tips for picking up stitches?  Don’t be greedy, share them…