Armwarmers and Dog Bone Dreams

I'm a tired bird this week. I blogged a couple of weeks ago about not minding the snow so much, but today, I'm frigging tired of it. I decided one lunch hour this week to go out for a walk, but wiped out badly on some ice. It was one of those circumstances when you say to yourself, "You know, I should move over there to get off this ice," and as you do so, you become airborne, your arms and legs flailing in slow motion, and you end up on the ground, gasping and grunting in pain. Result: really, really sore right buttock. And not just bruised-pride sore. I tried to do a workout with lunges and squats this morning, and that was groan-outloud-painful. My lower back is also a bit tense with the fear of doing it again. Stupid ice. Stupid gravity. Stupid physics.

Anyway, this week, I dove headlong into another sweater project. This one is Marnie MacLean's Lily. My version is going to be more like her own personal version that she posted on Ravelry, with ribbing on the collar and at the bottom edge instead of the rolled collar.

I've admired this pattern for a while, but there are a few weird things about this pattern, most notably: the yarn choice for the pattern. It's really, really weird. It's a DK weight that knits up at 20 stitches per 4 inches with a size 5 needle. That's like saying, "I used this yarn that has the qualities like the liquid silver guy in Terminator 2." I'm using some Cascade 220 Heather, which is a thicker yarn, and which I've used lots of times before, and I KNEW I wouldn't get gauge using the same size needles. I went with my gut, swatched it out, and yeah, I was right. Size 7 needles got me right on the button. Weird.

Since this is a sweater knitted in one piece from the bottom up, it's sort of nerve-wracking, because I don't have the luxury of leaving the sleeves until the end. The sleeves are usually the part of the pattern where I compensate if I feel like I'm going to run out of yarn, because I could always make them shorter if I needed to. And since this colour for this yarn is discontinued, this could get ugly and there may be lots of ripping out of stitches in the future, but whatever. I went ahead and knitted the sleeves first. They were a bit of a hard slog, because those nupps/bobbles are pretty, but man are they are time-consuming. What a pain in the butt... pardon the pun. If anything, they could make pretty armwarmers at the very least.

I started on the body of the sweater last night, but I took a break to read a few chapters and rest on the couch this morning.

And no, it's not easy to take photos without this face somehow getting in there.

The hubby was nice enough to go out and do the grocery shopping on his own today, which is a task we like to do together, but for which I was in no physical or mental shape to do today. When he came home, I helped unpack the goods. As I pulled a bag of Marrowbones out of the shopping bags, I remarked, "I just remembered. I had a dream last night that we had a secret stash of these things in the house."

To which the hubby replied, "How'd you end up in Rascal's dreams?"

I don't know. Perhaps he has more powers than we know. I'll be twitching my paws and barking in my sleep any day now...