Regressing

The title of this post refers to my toddler, not my crafting. Since we got rid of the pacifier, I am spending an inordinate amount of time in her room in the evening while she falls asleep, which is seriously impacting my crafting time. I am hoping that this trend is short lived, and in the meantime I'm keeping sight of the fact that my vacation is only a few days away and I'll have much more time to pursue my passions.

During the non-nap time on Sunday afternoon, I did manage to finish up a baby sweater that is still in need of a few buttons and a good block; I'm hoping to be able to share that with you later this week.

Now I find myself in a weird position: At the moment, the only things I have on the needles are my handspun socks (which are worked on during my lunch breaks) and my handspun Breezy Cardigan. I've been spinning only the past couple of nights because I feel like I want to start a new project but am unsure of which direction to go (and I haven't picked up the sweater because, well, it's a laceweight sweater -- I think that's enough said). On the one hand, Rainbow did ask me to make her a new doll for her birthday, and I'd already planned to make this one for her with some Blue Sky cotton I bought for it a couple of years ago, but that would require both digging out the yarn and winding it. I know I'm going to have to do that eventually, but when I'm left with an hour before it's time to go to bed, I really just want to start knitting.

The other thing I'm eager to cast on for is a new sweater -- the very first one I'm designing. I'd originally submitted it to a call for a Knit Picks seasonal collection; while it was rejected for that call, I was asked to have it be part of the IDP program, so I received yarn support, swatched, and am now in the process of crunching the numbers. This sweater is a top-down raglan that is entirely seamless, with minimal finishing, and while it's probably one of the easier sweater styles to design, I'm trying to grade it for six sizes (ranging from 32" to 48" bust), and I'll readily admit that math was always my least favorite subject in school. I'm working my way through it, though, because I'm really excited to start working with this yarn.

This is Capra, an 85% merino/15% cashmere blend. Knit Picks classifies it as a DK, but it's knitting up a little closer to a worsted for me; it definitely poofed up a bit when I washed the swatch. My hope is to have all the math done by this weekend so I can cast on before we start our holiday traveling. If I'm really fast, I might be able to finish the sweater while I'm on vacation so that I can send the pattern out for tech editing and then start the test knitting process early in the new year!