Rassafrassin'

"Elwood," I called out, "have you noticed me getting dumber lately?"

He had not. And while I'm relieved that my family has not been observing a slow slide into cognitive decline, I have to say: I used to be a better knitter than I have been this week. Or at least I think I did.

Part of the problem was evident early on: those colors are too similar; the variegated yarn isn't quite right. I was optimistic about pairing a heavy fingering yarn with a light sportweight yarn, but...let's just say I'm hoping it looks better after blocking. 

I love Ysolda Teague's patterns -- I have used more than a dozen of them now. But this one caused me a lot of face-scrunching, even though the troublesome part (joining the fingers) was something I'd already done in a very similar pattern of hers. Even with my best efforts to get it right, I joined the pinky finger backwards. It's not a big deal, just some extra ends to weave in, but it annoys me that my best efforts weren't up to the task.

In a total rookie error, I didn't swatch. I mean, it's a mitt, right? Sportweight yarn on size 3 needles -- sounds perfect! My gauge is only a smidge looser than hers, but I don't like the way they bunch around my wrist. I could practically keep a pet capybara in there. With my other Ysolda mitts, I made the same dumb mistake: Aran weight on size 9 needles, sure! Oh, wait, let's rip and reknit on size 8 needles. No, drat, let's rip and reknit on size 7 needles. And they still are roomier than I'd like them to be. Maybe she is chief designer for the Bring A Capybara On your peregriNations (BACON) movement -- I cannot say. My MIL has plumper wrists than I do, so I won't worry about it too much.

I will worry, though, about my total failure to get into a groove with this chart. Yesterday I could blame it on half-marathon fatigue, but today is a new day in which I just could not get my eyes and my hands on the same page. Get this: I broke the CC, knitted in the end, and discovered a round and a half later that I done so half a round too soon. Aaaaaagh! Facepalm facepalm!

In hopes of eliminating some of the looseness at the wrist, I threw in an extra pair of decreases and used a knitted bindoff. But BUMMER, I should have gone down a needle size and used a stretchy BO instead. The wrist ribbing looks sprawly to me, as ribbing does when you knit it with the same size needle as your stockinette, and the BO feels snug enough for me to wonder whether my MIL will find it annoying.

Can you guess how much joy I feel at the prospect of unpicking my cast-off edge and redoing the ribbing on a smaller needle? And then-- I get to knit a second one of these! Isn't it great that I have this nice relaxing hobby?