Adventures in Spit-Splicing

It's been a few days.  I'm still working on Girl Friday.  I try to knit 4 or 5 rows every day, just to keep some sort of momentum going on it.  I'm really enjoying knitting it right now.  I love the color of the wool, and I love the feel of it.  It's not the softest yarn I've ever knit with, but it's making this wonderfully squooshy fabric that feels so nice coming off the needles.  I stop to pet it quite frequently.

Today's new knitting experience was actually spit-splicing the ends of the first and second balls of yarn together.  I've really not knit much with yarn that can be felted to itself like this to join ends.  It's great because it means I won't have to carefully weave in those yarn ends later!  A responsible blogger would probably either describe the entire process, or provide a link to a good tutorial.  Perhaps I'll come back later and do that...or maybe even add a picture of the progress I've made on the sweater...

...and, in fact, a lot of other "Responsible Bloggers" have already documented the joys of spit-splicing, so I shall not.  In general, I love Knitting Help (www.knittinghelp.com) for excellent videos of many knitting techniques.

Otherwise, it's been a somewhat trying week or so.  C came down with a stomach bug on Friday night.  Of course this was the weekend that D had to be at work quite a bit for some data center upgrades.  We survived, though the washing machine is probably still begging for mercy in some alternate universe where machines can talk.  Then we had a great day Monday, with a productive morning running errands and a fun afternoon at the "Train Park" with friends.  Then Monday night, I got the stomach bug.  No.  Fun.

Fortunately, D had already planned on taking Tuesday off work as his comp day for being on pager duty the previous week, so I got to invalid it up, which was a HUGE help.  Today?  Today was OK.  We survived, which is a very good thing.  :-)

Sweater Anxiety

I have sweater anxiety.  I know the pattern I want to knit (Girl Friday from Knitty, Fall 2009).  I have the yarn sitting in the office / disaster area (Paton's Classic Wool in Cognac Heather).  I just can't seem to pick up and cast on, though.  This would be my first sweater for myself, and I seem to be afraid of it.  I swatched the lace pattern a few months ago, and have no idea what needle size I used at the time, so that irritation with myself for not taking proper notes and wasting time is part of the finger-dragging, I think.  I also am afraid of my own ability to create something that actually fits me.

...I started the draft of this post a few days ago (Before Stitches West!) and that same night, I finally managed to haul out needles and wool and get a new swatch cast on.  Today I finished and blocked the swatch, so I'll take some final measurements (and hopefully edit this post to include a picture)  tomorrow.  It looks like the 9's I used today were a touch large, but I don't actually have size 8 tips in wood, so I'll spend some time negotiating with myself about the merits of doing a little extra math vs. ordering size 8 tips, having to wait for them to arrive, and then swatching again.

What do you think I'll decide?

Edited to add this picture of my swatch, now that it's been washed, blocked, and dried.  The color is a bit washed out in this photo, but the texture shows up pretty well.