I know (hangs head)

I haven't posted in a couple of weeks, but I had an excuse — I had to get over The Need to Frog. You know how that can go. Sometimes you need a deep breath and a big drink to get over it.

See, you'd think I was doing really well on my Joanie sweater, and so did I. I swear, I did try it on as I went, and it seemed okay.


Until I started the sleeve... and realized I had knit a straitjacket.
Excuse the dreadfully unflattering photo. It was early morning. The key here is, I can't lift my arm any further than I'm lifting it.

The problem is that the yoke is just too deep:
Going by the photos in the pattern, the ribbing should stop just before the peak of the bust, but on me it starts at the end of the bust. Now, some of this is because of the fact the buttons aren't on so it's hanging slightly lower than it normally would, but not 4" of it.

I need to rip back the whole body and about 2-3" of the ribbing, and make the yoke the length indicated for size medium. This should not be a surprise to me, since I am short and stocky, but I just didn't realize the yoke was too long until I had armholes as reference. In my defense, I have never knit a yoked sweater before.

Well, as you can imagine... I started knitting something else immediately!

Progress on self-indulgence

A while back, I realized it was kind of annoying to have to pull on well-worn, slightly-stiff sweatshirts when I wanted a layer of warm around the house and, for whatever reason, wanted a pullover instead of a cardigan. I normally choose a cardigan because I don't like to feel things against my throat, but sometimes I just want that pullover warmth, and loose-necked old sweatshirts has been my only option for a while now.

An excellent excuse to knit myself something.

I've planned two pullovers. One's for winter and will be wool; one, for transitional seasons and cool summer evenings, will be a cotton/silk/nylon blend. Specifically, the latter will be Joanie, a recent Knitty favorite, in Classic Elite Classic Silk in a gorgeous cranberry color which is of course impossible to reproduce in a photo despite some fiddling in iPhoto:

Not only can I not show you the color properly, I can't share with you the absolute yumminess of this yarn. Knit into ribs for the collar, it's cushy and irresistible. I've actually already washed and blocked the upper part of the pullover (to check length), so I can tell you that the ribs hold up and it's beyond squishy. I can't wait to be done. It'll be hard to take off.

My health's been getting me down a bit lately, so it's nice to have something positive going on.