For a little while, I was afraid I'd broken my knitting mojo. (Or lost it...I guess mojo is a thing you lose, rather than break? Or is that just the Austin Powers kind of mojo, which is different [and not necessarily a good different] from knitting mojo?).

But it's back. I really really love working on Cobblestone. I knit on it this morning while proctoring a test. I did find a place about 8 rows back where I had dropped a stitch - but when I came back around to it, I just worked it back up through the intervening rows (with the tip of the needle - I didn't even have a crochet hook with me, which is what I usually use) and kept on going. I was able to do that with ease because Araucania is such a well-behaved yarn - it's not super slippy, so the dropped stitch didn't ladder on below where I dropped it and missed it. It's stretchy enough that the place where I had knitted "over" the dropped stitch opened back up to let it back in. So the repair is invisible, and that pleases me. (Would that every mistake in life were so neatly and easily fixed.)

Oh, I love the yarn. Araucania is such a nice yarn. It's true that it's not as soft as some, nor does it have the funky Noro-esque color changes, nor is it even all that exotic. (It's just plain old wool. Not anything like Bluefaced Leicester or Magic Icelandic Sheep or even merino). But it's just so right for this sweater.

And I love the sweater design. I love that there are little panels of garter stitch that go under where the sleeves will fall. It gives it a rustic feel. The sweater looks like a sweater that someone living in a cabin in the woods would knit for themselves. It looks like a fall sweater. It looks like something you could wear to go apple-picking in, or to rake leaves or stack wood in. And that makes me happy, too.

I tend to prefer designs that are simple, but are well-engineered - designs that work without jumping up and kissing you on the lips about their designeyness, if you get what I mean. I like the quiet knitterly craftsmanship of this pattern.

I also remember when and where I bought the yarn - last fall's Mid Fall Break, at the same old yarn shop I go to every mid-fall break. This is actually unusually fast for me to start using a yarn that I purchased - often they sit in stash even longer than a year.

I'm almost done with my duties (well, save for the AAUW meeting tonight) for the day...I've decided that since I've been working what feels like extra-hard these past couple weeks, I'm going to take the afternoon off. Perhaps go out for lunch (I've not decided that yet. We have two kinds of restaurants in town: ones that are good and sit-down and impossible to get into over the noon hour, and fast food places. And I really don't feel like fast food.)

I'm going to wind off the rest of the Araucania for this sweater, and I think some of the skeined-up sock yarn that's been sitting around, and also dig out some Cascade 220 bought even longer ago at Stitches and Stuff and wind it off into big cakes in preparation for starting the Skye Tweed Vest sometime soon.

(Yes, it's another pattern designed for a man that I'm co-opting for me. How did the old song go? him: "I can knit a sweater!" Her: "I can fill it better..."?)

Also, moved by the feeling of success, I'm thinking about picking the Airy Cardigan back up this weekend and finishing the back, and then figuring out the sleeves. After all, I succeeded at lengthening the sleeves on the SitCom Chic; I should be able to do this one, too.


And Kucki - no, I haven't started Hey Teach. Maybe it'll be the next after these get done.