The Grouchy Knitter

I'm grouchy, and I'm not going to hide it. Pardon me while I gripe for a minute.

I am a person who needs hours and hours of personal time so that I can stand to be around people. I spent most of my life extended beyond my capacity to be around people. Over the last four years, I have become much wiser and more protective. I focus my people-energy on my husband and kids, a few friends, church and other positive events. I have been very grateful to have the house to myself during the day while Doug and the kids are out at work and school. This year I'm feeling deprived. Doug works at home now as a private contractor. There are perks to having him home during the day, but I am aware of his presence in the house, and this tends to wear me down. On top of that, we've had endless bad weather, power outages, and other stressful disruptions that have seriously eroded my ability to cope. My kids' lives are more complicated this year: they are both unusually independent and unusually needy, all at the same time. I'm going a bit mad.

I had just booted the kids out of the house and back to school from Christmas and was beginning to celebrate a month of total alone time at home while Doug works a contract out of the house. The very day that he left the house to work away from home, my darling 14-year-old son came home from school to announce -- to my ENORMOUS shock and horror -- that he was getting a week and a half off of school for semester break. Starting this Thursday. Please, can I trade lives with a hermit for a couple of weeks?? Cottage in the woods, shack, cave...it all sounds good to me right about now. I'm furious that the school would give a bunch of grade-9's a week and a half off so close to Christmas, and with spring break just around the corner.

Pissed off, grumbling, and plain old depressed...but knitting anyway.

I'm working away on the Mondial Kross jacket. I have done the back, both sleeves and one front. I have sewn the front/sleeve/back on the left side and tried on the half jacket. It's going to fit more closely than I thought, but this is a good thing. It's going to be a cute and cuddly sweater. The yarn is super thick and next to the skin soft 100% merino. The camo makes it a bit hard to photograph, and the left sleeve looks all shriveled since it is knit in ribs/cables and not yet blocked.



In this shot, you can see the left front in place, and I still have to knit the right front and sew up the seams on the right. Then I pick up stitches all around the neck edge for the hood. The pattern has pockets that you knit separately and then sew on the front, but I'm thinking of skipping them until I see how the sweater looks without 'em. I don't think I'll want extra bulk on the front (who does?).



This is some pretty Koigu Painter's Palette Merino I bought last summer for socks. Once I'm done that rainbow wellington sock on the go, I'm going to cast on for a pair of socks with this.



I also treated myself to a few colours of Noro Silver Thaw. Little Knits has a tempting sale on those right now, and I got three 100gram balls each of number 1 and number 5 (before those two colours sold out, which they did in a day). I know that one lot will make a shawl, and the other lot will make up the top part of a Poppy sweater from Yarnplay, but I'll have to see them before I'll know which one will do what.

I'd still rather be a hamster...