Breezy Cables has Blown Away........

Did I ever show you Breezy Cables?




It's a Kathy Zimmerman pattern from the Spring 2006 IK. I began this in Fall 2006. The pics are a little dark, but as you can see, it's heavy on the cables and texture. I love love love the finished pattern.

I hate hate hate that I have to pay so much attention to knitting it though! It's ridiculous! The 4 most hateful words to me when I'm looking at a pattern are "at the same time." Yeah, I think you know what I mean.

The back went along fairly easily actually. I love cables and texture and having to follow a repeating pattern helped make it progress quickly. I also learned how to cable without a cable needle which was great. I made a zillion copies of the chart and marked each in sequence and noted where all the shaping happened. Then came the fronts.

As you can see, I've never even finished the first front. I got through the "at the same time" crap and needed to come up for air. I've never gone back to it. It did all work out fine, but it was so tedious to have to keep two separate sets of notes and keep the pattern straight and stop the pattern here and start it up again there that it quickly lost its appeal. Not to mention that at age 33 (for 4 more days), I felt like I needed a magnifying glass to read that darned magazine and I'm not ready for that yet.

A couple months ago I tried starting a sleeve, but at this point, nothing was drawing me to this project anymore. Not the yarn, not the pattern, not the work I'd already done, not even the finished product. I had chosen to make this in TLC Essentials in Robin Egg. I'm cheap and I'm learning that this is not always a virtue. Great for afghans, not even mildly acceptable for an aran cardigan.

Then the color - a mild blue with a hint of green (duh, robin egg). I do still like the color, but I've come to realize that I'm not going to wear a robin egg cardigan because it isn't going to remotely go with anything I own. Even though I'll admit that what I have already knit is excellently done, it doesn't even look attractive to me anymore through the gross sheen of the acrylic. It's not squishy or cuddly. It wouldn't keep me warm and darn it, I want to be warm when I put on a sweater!

So even though I have not frogged my work yet, Breezy Cables will go the way of the whispering winds as soon as I run out of the rest of the unused yarn. From one extreme to another, I've cast on for the Uma Sweater in The Natural Knitter (BTW, can I live in this book, please?). Could there be anything more opposite? It's a U-neck garter stitch - ALL garter stitch - pullover. It would be delicious in a lofty merino, but I'll make it out of the robin egg acrylic and wear it over my long sleeve T's. I'm cheap, and all that yarn has to go to some kind of use.

If I get sick of garter stitch, I can always make the pieces of the sweater into some kind of out of proportion Log Cabin blanket.