And just a short two years later...a knitted thing.

Hey! Remember how I used to knit? Yeah, me too. I think I've started every knitting post in the last handful of years this way.

Oh how I've gone astray. 

Until such time as there's a road trip, however. And you know we just went on a road trip. 

Evidence of a true road trip: Combos in every tragic flavor. I like the cheddar cheese pretzel ones because I, at the same time, sort of hate myself.

Also, we saw this Biggest Machine Ever digging a hole to China. I can only assume.

And that is basically the sum total of the photos I took from the road because I was alternating between rampant illness management (Bubba and I both got the plague before we left. Hey THANKS CES for infecting us all.) and knitting the forever-taking #3 Sweater.

Why #3?

Well, because first there was this one. 

Sweater #1 from the Leaf Tshirt pattern that no longer exists on Ravelry. Rude.

Then there was this one.

Sweater #2 from the Leaf Tshirt pattern in which I ditched the leaf and gave it sleeves.

Then there was the forever-taking one that I *just* finished after...um...almost two years.

Why, hello October 2011, fancy meeting you here IN 2013 GEEZ WHERE HAS MY LIFE GONE?

Which, in the end, looks nothing like the first one at all.

Sweater #3. Everything different except the raglan shaping.

In the sense that it has short sleeves instead of cap sleeves, 1x1 ribbed cuffs instead of rolled cuffs, shaping at the hips and no leaf pattern at all.

Because, apparently, I became all I Don't Know About This Rolled Cuff Thing as I was getting to the bottom of the sweater and decided that I didn't want that dumb cuff rolling up on me like so much roller shade. 

As you can see in Sweater #2, that rolled cuff is no joke. It wants to roll like friggen crazy. Hate that. 

But - that brings me to the Important Knitting Thing That I Learned during the knitting of this, my #3 Sweater from this pattern - you can totally take out a cast-off row for a do-over. 

So, like, for example only, you *think* that you've knit the thing long enough, so you happily and full of relief and joy cast the thing off only to find that, once trying it on, it's actually about half a foot too short - you can cast that final row back ON and resume knitting until such time as you've deluded yourself into thinking, once again, that it's "totally long enough, I'm so DONE with this sunuvabitching project" and you cast off again.

Repeat as necessary until such time as it *is* actually long enough or you've worn the yarn into dust and can no longer knit it lest it disintegrate fully in your fingers.

For example only.

The danger of me now knowing that I can totally undo and redo a cast-off row is that Sweater #2 back there is in jeopardy of being reworked. 

Because I hate that muther effing rolled bottom cuff and I think it needs redoing otherwise I'll never wear it because the thing turns into a tube top in five seconds when I'm wearing it which is not the look I'm going for in winter when I'm putting on a sweater. Or in the hottest summer months when I'm sweating just wrestling on the Boston Marathon Strangler.

I don't wear tube tops is what I'm saying.

Also, I think I may have knit this sweater a bit too long. It either needs to be about six inches longer so that I can wear it with leggings or about six inches shorter so that it can rest at the top of my jeans and not get all HEY I'M A FATTY around the middle. 

Perhaps I should stop taking sweater photos during PMS time. Yes, perhaps.

Anyway, I finished this #3 Sweater for the time being and since classes resume next week, I don't imagine that I'll have fuck all for time to go undoing it and redoing it and then messing with the other sweater even though I'd like to be wearing them both RIGHT NOW because it has suddenly gotten cooler again.

And here I thought it was going to be spring now.

First daffodil right there. And the "Circle of Friends" that I recently exhumed from the future hop yard.

Yeah - hop yard. We'll get to that soon enough.