Fearless or Foolhardy?

So we've established that I did not in fact spend the last few weeks sewing Pork Chop a Dorothy Halloween costume. So how did I keep myself off the streets and out of trouble? I'm going to level with you.

I took up smoking crack.

Now, I don't recall buying crack. Or obtaining tools to smoke the crack (in fact I'm not sure what tools one uses to smoke crack). And I really don't remember actually smoking the crack. But it's the only possible explanation for what happened. I'm going to consider the absence of any memory of using crack to be crack-induced memory loss. Just don't tell The Greatest. I'd hate to have him arrest me in front of the children.

Here's what happened.

Feeling slightly guilty about not sewing on Pork Chop's Halloween costume I decided that I would knit her something instead. Months ago, when Sweet Peas was but a tiny baby keeping me up at night (as opposed to her current status as the big baby keeping me up all night), I purchased the Willa Pattern to knit for Pork Chop. I knit a swatch one night after a particularly long day where Sweet Pea refused to sleep more than 10 minutes at a time, and had slept maybe 50 minutes total that day. I swatched while attempting to let Sweet Pea cry it out, but the yarn was unsuitable, I abandoned the project, and rescued Sweet Pea her crib. The evening was an all around failure. I tried to block the entire event from my mind, which included the sweater.

But my renewed guilt over not doing enough for my oldest called this memory to mind. Out came the Willa pattern once again. At first glance there was nothing really suitable on hand in my quickly dwindling yarn stash. But I was undaunted. I remember when I was once a fearless knitter, creating sweaters and lingerie from acrylic yarn I purchased at Wal-Mart. I wanted to be a fearless knitter once again.

I spied some blue yarn in a basket in the bottom of my yarn cabinet. I had purchased it years and years ago to knit a sweater for me. But alas. I liked the color in the catalog much better than I did in person. So it sat waiting it's turn. Eventually inspiration would strike and I would find the perfect use for it right? I had purchased 10 balls of the yarn, but I had swatched it for so many different potential projects I was down to nine balls. This yarn simply could not decide what it wanted to be. It was entirely too thin, but maybe held double????

So holding the yarn doubled I swatched it. Kinda. I knit a gauge swatch, but I didn't wash it (bad knitter, no cookie). I measured the swatch and my gauge was close. I decided close was close enough(again, bad knitter, no diet coke). And if it came out a little large? Well, we'll just call that room to grow.

I had nine balls of yarn. Was that going to be enough? I didn't even do the math to check. It sounded like enough for sweater for a little girl. After all, I had ordered ten balls for a sweater for me. Surely nine would be enough to clothe tiny Pork Chop.

The universe sent me signals. It tried to make me stop.

Meaty spilled soda all over my pattern. The Greatest save a few pages, but threw most of them away. No biggie. The original was on the computer.

But wait. My computer crashed. We had to re image the hard drive. We lost all our programs and cools stuff. I'm still trying to find my favorite blogs. I managed to save all the pictures before the reboot. But The Greatest was put in charge of transferring all our documents on disk, including my file of Knitting Patterns. I opened the disk he made, only to find the folder was empty. The disk contained a single lonely empty folder. All our documents were gone. This pattern...gone. All my electronic knitting patterns? Gone. My entire collection of Marie Grace's patterns? G.O.N.E. This might be ground for a divorce. I'm telling you, sometimes he's not that great.

But there was still hope. I had the main portions of the pattern still. I lost the first two pages, but one was informational, and I'd already knit the second page. And I lost the schematic, but I only needed that for blocking, I can wing that I decided (I know, what's wrong with me, it's like I'm trying to fail on purpose). So I soldiered on. And I knit a back, a right front, a left front, and two sleeves.

Aren't they purty?

Now I need to block the pieces (which I am avoiding) and sew them together so I can knit the button band and collar. It's a simple band, only a few rows of garter stitch. Then sew on the buttons and I'm done. Easy-peasy. What can go wrong?

Weeelllll, where do I start.

Remember when I figured it could be a little big? Well the sleeves look REALLY big. And those nine balls I thought would be more than enough?

This is what I have left. The car is in there for scale. I'm not quite sure there's enough there to knit the button band. And oh yeah I almost forgot

WHY DO I KEEP KNITTING CARDIGANS WHEN I CAN NEVER FIND BUTTONS I LIKE TO GO ON THEM?

So assuming I block everything and it fits and the sleeves aren't as ginormous as they look. And assuming I have enough yarn to knit the button band and collar. Then I'm still left with the task of choosing buttons, which I really ought to do before I knit the button band so I can be sure my button holes are going in the right place. Only payday is a week away, and I hate to spend the gas money driving all over the valley looking for decent buttons. *insert aggravated scream here* After I photographed the sweater pieces I stuffed them in the bottom of a cabinet where I'm sure they'll stay until sometime in January after Meaty's birthday, once the holiday high is gone and the guilt once again sets in.

You'd think I'd learn. But no. I wanted to be all fearless. I'm blaming it on the crack.