That time

It’s that time of year. The time when a young girls thoughts turn to her woolen knits. She thinks of wearing them. She wants to wear them. Alas they’re all really too darn warm to wear. She starts thinking of strange ways to get to wear her knits….What if I turn up the AC and stand in front of it? cool cool air, but will it penetrate the wool well enough? What if I put it in the freezer for a while, then put it on? It would be like wearing an ice pop. mmm ice pop. I have a chest freezer, I could just hop into it.

The logical part of the brain eventually chimes in…
Ever thought of knitting something from cotton?
It’s true, I have a few cotton garments. A sweater and I’m working on the short sleeve cardi. The logical brain wants me to make a tank top. A tank top will shut up crazy brain. This is the time of year I talk myself in and out of knitting a tank top. In the past week I’ve searched through Ravelry, purchased 2 tank top patterns, set aside 2 from magazines, pulled out 3 more from what I have in books, and printed 6 from the web.

That would be a total of 13 tank top patterns I have in my hot wool loving little hands. I’ve refrained from buying yarn. So far. I have a ton of cotton yarns from previous year’s crazy tank top knitting desires, I think it will be enough to satisfy me this year. Do you need proof? I’ve put a good lot of my yarn onto my Ravelry Stash. I haven’t got any of the sock yarn in there or alot of the single skeins here and there. Oh and then I’ve left out the really really really old stash. I have some things that are old even for my Gram’s stash. And of course I thought I was done and then found 4 more bags of yarn so, I’m not sure I’ll ever really be done. Oh. Right. Back to why we’re playing in my stash bins. We are looking for cottons. Go ahead look, I’ll wait.

I lied, I’m not waiting, I’m going to keep babbling.
I don’t enjoy knitting with cotton. Yes, I do realize that I have quite a lot of cotton for someone that dislikes knitting it. In my defence, last year I made a cardi from cotton ease and I have something going this year as well. But I want a tank top, I think. The problem is that as I think about it, I just don’t want to do it. I want the tank but knitting cotton is just, so, well, not quite enjoyable most of the time. Knitting with cotton is like wearing a wool jumpsuit to the beach in August. Now I’m babbling, whining and exaggerating….

What you want to hear is if I actually cast on for a tank top.
I did.
I cast on for This in Black. Yes, I know there is absolutely no cotton content in that yarn. Yes, I know it’s called a vest… I think what’s important is that I’m knitting a summery type item in a yarn that I can stand.

This is all I got done yesterday:

I know that’s a pitiful little amount of knitting, considering this should be a pretty fast knit for me.
In fact I did probably knit 8 inches worth if you added it up in between the froggings. I printed off the pattern and looked at the chart. It looks odd, all these blank spaces.

oh well, I’ll just do it.
Nope, it doesn’t work out. Rip. So, I figured the chart was wrong and I tried to interpret it a different way. No. That just doesn’t work either. Sadly being the stubborn shit that I am. I tried to interpret it yet again and had to frog. FInally, I hopped onto the web and tried to find someone who had made this. No one has made it on Ravelry. I did a few other searches to no avail. I searched my pattern books to see if this pattern could be found. Nothing there either. I went back to the net.

Aha, someone made something called princess. It was the t-shirt though. Sad I moved my hand to backspace and in a blink I realized the bottom of the t-shirt was in the pattern I needed. I went back to Elann (who hosts the free pattern) and I found the pattern for the Princess T-shirt.

Well what do you know. What I was stubbornly reading as ONE square really should have been divided into, oh, 2 or 3 or 4. I know, you thought I was brilliant and in one fell swoop I dashed your visions of me upon the rocks. I spent half my day yesterday screwing up because I never re-drew the graph lines that were missing. I’m not sure when I got to be so dense. Husbeast thinks it was around the time we went to MA Sheep and wool. I seemed to lose intelligence along the drive. Unfortunately on the drive back I didn’t seem to be able to find the bits of intelligence I left here and there.

I’m going to spend my weekend (whatever part of it, isn’t busting my butt on the shop) working on summer stuff. This wool girl will have more cottonish items to wear. No more standing in the meat locker at the grocery store just so I can wear woolens.