I have seriously had The. Best. Day. Ever.

I didn’t sleep much last night, and woke up at 5:20 this morning, unable to fall back asleep. I decided to get up and drink some water, and by the time I had drunk a full glass, I was wide awake and decided to just stay up and catch up on some blog reading and work on my sweater. By 7:00, I was still perfectly awake and alert (very rare for me), so I decided to jump in the shower and then run out for some coffee, since I had none in the apartment. I sat at the coffee shop for a bit and worked on a new frivolous little pattern I’m working on, and arrived home around 9:30. Just as I was getting out of the car, I got a phone call from a DHL delivery woman who said she had a package for me but couldn’t find my apartment. I turned around and she was sitting in the parking lot directly behind me (the numbering system on our buildings is really wonky), so I just walked over to her and got my package. Once inside, I opened it up and pulled out my official job offer. I start July 2nd! Yay!

After reading through all the details and figuring out what I needed to do before the 2nd, I set all that aside and continued working on my V-neck cardigan. I only had a few more rows to go before I could cast off, but when I laid it out to measure it, I realized that despite all my previous self-assurances, this sweater was not working out the way it was supposed to.

The back of my Louisa Harding V-neck cardigan, soon to be ripped out

No matter how I pushed and prodded the fabric, I could not get things to line up properly, even after removing the circular needle from my working edge. Not only is there a significant bias to the left, but my gauge - especially row gauge - seems to be peculiarly off in places. Though the stitch gauge is pretty consistent throughout, when I measure the row gauge, it seems to be an entire row per inch tighter on the left side compared to the right side. My vertical columns are not completely vertical, and the left armhole is 8.75″ tall (as it’s supposed to be), whereas the right armhole is closer to 10.5″ tall. The width of the armholes are different, too, and the distance between the bottom of the armholes and the bottom of the sweater are different on either side as well. All this might not be so obvious from the above picture, so I overlayed the photo with some lines showing just how screwed up it all is.

Overlayed lines show that things are not lining up like they ought to

As you can see, if you run a straight line across the top edge and then place perfectly parallel lines along the bottom of the armholes and the bottom of the sweater, you see how skewed things are. And if you place a line following what are supposed to be the vertical columns of eyelets, you see that they’re not sitting perpendicular to any of the horizontal lines - instead of a 90° angle between the vertical columns and the edges, you see that the columns are slanting to the left 5° when you measure from the top, and it’s off by 8° when you measure from the bottom!

I may attempt this sweater again sometime in the future, but… for now, the poor thing is getting frogged, and the yarn is getting put back to stash status. Oh well. Maybe it’s fate telling me I’ve got more pressing projects to be working on.

I’ve already started planning out my Christmas knitting. It’s hard to think about Christmas when it’s still 6 months away and it’s 100° outside, but I’ve got a lot of big projects lined up, and I want to make sure I have time to finish them all.

I haven’t started knitting these Christmas presents yet, though. And while it’s true that I’ve got several pairs of socks and a glove to finish in the next few weeks, after I discarded the sweater, I decided to cast on for a new project. It’s one I’ve been mulling over for a little while, and it honestly won’t take me more than a day or so to actually finish. But it’s a mystery project, because I believe the person it’s for reads this blog, and I don’t want to give it away prematurely! I’ll give a few hints about it, though:

1. It’s made with Idena Bambino fingering-weight cotton.

Idena Bambino Cotton

2. It’s a pattern I’ve made up myself, and it’s not something I’ve ever seen before, knit or otherwise.
3. The recipient of the mystery gift will get it in July, and it has a specific function that deems it necessary to be received during this month.
4. There will be a few small pewter charms incorporated into the pattern.

My mystery project, along with some of the pewter charms I’ll be using for it

I bought these charms today at Ornamentea, a beading and craft store in Raleigh. My girls - Laura, Maggie, and Eva - and I decided to have a girl’s afternoon out today, so we all met for lunch at Olive Garden for soup, salad, and breadsticks. Because Eva had done so much driving me around while my car was sick, I offered to pick her up today. I had intended to ask her if she wouldn’t mind stopping by Ornamentea after lunch so I could pick up a few charms for my mystery project, but before I got a chance to, she interjected and asked if we could go to Panoplie, Ornamentea’s sister store that focuses more on paper arts (though there’s a lot of overlap in the two stores’ inventory), because she wanted to get some stuff for her resume and portfolio. I laughed and laughed, and then told her about my plan, and she joined me in laughing. (Mom would say we had ESPN2^**.)

Anyway, so we had a really nice, long lunch, and then the four of us went shopping. We hit Ornamentea first, downtown, and then headed up to Panoplie, over in North Raleigh. We met for lunch at 1:00, but it was 6:30 before I got home tonight! I love all my friends, but Eva said it perfectly - despite the fact that our conversations didn’t really differ that much from those we have when the boys are around, there’s something different and special about hanging out with just the girls. We’ll have to do it again sometime.

So, despite my sad, discarded sweater, today has been awesome. I received my official job offer. I got out and about. I drove all over town (and oh how I missed that). I danced in the car (I had forgotten how much I love listening to music, since I usually only do that in the car). I hung out with friends, had a good meal, started a new, fun project, and got to go shopping for fun, crafty stuff at new stores. I laughed. I talked. I socialized. I haven’t felt this alive - like a real person - in months. Today, in a way, marked the beginning of a new stage of my life. And in case you couldn’t tell, it’s a damn good one.

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** My mom and I have always shared a close bond, to the point where she’ll be thinking about me, and I’ll call 30 seconds later. Or I’ll tell her I just watched When Harry Met Sally on DVD, and she’ll tell me she’d been thinking about watching it, herself. Or whatever. I’m not sure how or when it started, but instead of calling it “ESP,” we’d call it “ESPN.” Eventually, that evolved into “ESPN2,” because it’s never the really important stuff - just the trivial stuff. Our version of a psychic connection is akin to the bastard step-child of sports television - all we get is the crappy stuff.