And it fits!

The boys can't believe it, and neither can I.



My cardigan is not only complete, but it fits! I completed the knitting on Saturday and the little amount of finishing on Sunday (weave in ends, graft armholes). I did a 15 minute soak in wool wash (Kookaburra) and laid it out flat on the carpet in my room. By Monday morning it was almost dry, so I carefully laid it on the sweater rack in my dryer and gave it a little heat. Perfect. I waited to sew the buttons on until it was blocked and that seemed to work out great.

I recruited our fledgling photographer (Emmett) to take a couple of pictures, and this was the best shot:



Just kidding. The light was bad and I looked awful. I tried again with the self-timer and the result was only barely acceptable. I'll hopefully enlist Ryan and the weather (it's been SERIOUSLY nasty in Seattle this week) to get some more flattering shots this weekend. I cropped one so that I could share:



I also did a preemptive strike on the bottom hem to keep it from folding inward and upward. It involved a crochet hook and more yarn. I'll give details once I can take a detail shot.

Other than that the week has been spent entertaining boys with dribbling noses and ear infections (Emmett, but not Leon). Here's a good moment from Monday:



As for what I'm knitting now; I've picked Ryan's socks back up and will dedicate myself to them until completion. (I swear.) I'm knitting heel flaps now. Yippee!

Productive, not so much

I started on a new post on Tuesday, got one sentence into it and had to stop because our keyboard broke.

Yesterday, while Emmett was at school, I sat down to finish one of my 3 designs; it looked good for a bit, I completed the plant layout and labeling. After getting the plant list generated and placed (my software does that for me) I saved it and printed it to pdf. Yippee! Then, I looked closer at the plant list: 14 Luzula? There are only 5 on the plan. 2 entries for Panicum? What's going on? Turns out I've got some phantom plants on the page that I can't seem to delete. Rest of the day was spent troubleshooting. Bah.

This morning I put a call into customer support (on the east coast). I've done this before; I leave a message and in an hour or so get an extremely helpful call back. Problems are solved, work resumes. So after my call and message, I thought "what harm can come from uninstalling and reinstalling the software?" Bad juju. Lots of badness. Now, after 2 more calls to support, no return calls, 3 attempts to uninstall/reinstall, and 2 tries with a windows update, I'm worse off then before. My drafting software is actually 2 programs working cooperatively, the drawing interface and a database. The database is not seeing any of my saved plant information; and in order for me to actually complete a design, I need that plant information. And I still have the phantom plants.

Hopefully I'll get a call from support in the morning. Otherwise, I might drop-kick my laptop off the deck.

Worse yet, with this work load looming and customers waiting, not much knitting is getting done, either. I feel guilty sitting down and working on the sweater. And I'm so so so tantalizingly close to finishing. Maybe tonight with absolutely no chance of work happening, I won't feel (too) guilty to knit as I watch some tv.