Gentle Teresa – back

I am participating in Jean Chung’s knitalong of her Gentle Teresa pattern, which debuted in the First Fall issue of Knitty. I LOVE this sweater, and can’t wait to be finished with it so I can wear it everywhere all the time. It’s purple, so I’m not exaggerating very much at all.

Knitting? What knitting?

I signed up for the knitalong, and then promptly forgot all about it until Jean asked me how my sweater was coming along. At the time she wrote me, it wasn’t at all, but twelve hours later, I was ready to start the chart section. I should have called it a night there, but Damon was doing something funny with his eyes and I decided that I had time for more knitting and more episodes of The Vampire Diaries.

I love the way this pattern starts! I was doing just fine until I reached the chart portion of the back (so, you know, 3.5″ into it), and then things quickly spiraled out of control. It’s my fault for not using stitch markers, forgetting that I suck at counting, and for paying so much attention to episodes that I’ve already seen.

If there’s a way to lose a stitch between one row and the next, I will find it (the way, not the stitch; that usually takes several minutes of searching to locate). Once I righted my ship for the third time, I put stitch markers around the three charted portions of the pattern, which is where I was doing all of my stitch-losing. So far, so good, and I have already received several compliments on the color of this sweater. Having this many witnesses means that I’m going to have to work at this one and not procrastinate too horribly, but I still have my Halloween costume to work on, so this could get tricky.

I’m so awesome, sometimes it hurts. I finished poor A’s socks. Luckily, it has taken me so long that it is almost an appropriate time of year to gift somebody with a pair of socks. I’m going to block them tonight and probably put them in the mail on Wednesday (or once I get A’s new address).

Yippee!

Will post pictures soonish.

It’s a good thing that I finished tonight. Tomorrow begins the September phase of the KAL to Cookie A’s patterns. I already have her book, so I will start with Angee, which is in her book, which I already own. The other pattern is Marlene, which is cute, but which I do not yet own. I’m not going to buy that one until I can properly determine my level of commitment to the first pair. I may never finish at all, so I’m holding off on purchasing another sock pattern.