A Verrry Bad Idea

This little cold spell got me thinking about a winter jacket - haven't replaced the one that got taken by the nasty boys who broke into my car a couple of winters ago. I thought I'd knit an indian sweater quickly since I have all these balls of yarn hanging around. So I dug around & found 6 black, 2 grey, 1 white, 1 pink & 1 marled grey. I'm not including all the browns that I refused to consider. Figured that should be enough to make me a knit-in-one-piece-from-the-bottom-up sweater! Then I started to knit. Bloody hell!! I never considered how heavy this thing would be. And I'd forgotten how much it made me wheeze, sneeze, cough & drip!! The wool is SO DRY that it pours tiny fibres into the air like a cloud while you're trying to knit. I could spray it with a little oil & seal it into a garbage bag for a while, but I decided it wasn't worth my time. Time to find it a new home! I decided to search out that bag of polar fleece I've got tucked away & SEW a light winter jacket!!

I've actually cast-on for the Arvik top-down raglan sweater again. After the nasty Buffalo wool, Arvik is a joy to work with. The wool is soft & slightly greasy in a nice sort of way. No over processing here. I suspect some wool allergies may just be over-processed wool or nasty dyes. I don't seem to have a problem with most of it, most of the time. This time, I'll be using the standard Raglan, top-down shaping with the extra "Legal Loopholes" to increase the fronts & back while leaving a narrower sleeve. Hopefully, I'll be wearing it in a week or so.

Two more pairs of socks are finished!
The Never-Ending socks are Ended!! I couldn't leave well enough alone, mind you & I put yellow toes on them for fun. My ex will be tickled pink to get them - he hasn't had a pair of socks in quite a while. When you wear size 13WWWW, it ain't easy to find people willing to knit socks for you.

The brown & grey 'manly' socks are also finished. The BT's dad will be the happy recipient - he hasn't got any in brown or grey yet & I think he'll like these ones. I didn't put colored toes on these because I had plenty of yarn left over & wanted to use as much of it as possible. I'll bet I still have enough left over to make a couple pairs of baby socks.

And, as if I didn't have enough on the needles - I've cast on the wild hot pink & blue Opal yarn pictured here on the left that I bought in the bargain basket a couple of weeks ago at Knitopia. They'll be for one of the 'girly' feet I added to my Christmas list. I've only just finished the ribbing on the first sock but I can already tell that they're gonna be soooooooo wild!