a new project

 Yeah, I know. 

But I was having a somewhat difficult day - I had to read through "post tenure review" packets for colleagues and one, I felt like, "THEY ARE SO MUCH BETTER THAN I AM" and I started to get down for not having published more or having gotten such glowing evaluations from  students.

And I joked on Bluesky: "Maybe a new knitting project could fix me"

And I thought about the projects I had in mind - a couple hats, and I have yarn for a simple cardigan (made of bulky yarn) and lots of sock yarn. And then I remembered Lithos, from Knitty - a scarf or shawl (it comes in two widths) and how I had wanted to make one, and I had even bought yarn for it in sort of a shale-grey. 

And when I got done with piano practice and dinner, I went and got the yarn. And looked at the pattern. And realized I didn't have enough, even for the smaller size (and I wanted to make the shawl size). Went back and looked to see if I had more, but as I remember, I had only bought the two balls (I was misremembering how much it took). 

So I sighed, and hunted through my "unassigned" yarn (that I don't already have a project in mind for. First I found some Paton's Classic Wool, but there wasn't quite enough if it took the full yardage listed for the commercial yarn (they also have a handspun version). And I don't think I can get that yarn any more, or at least not that dye lot - it came from JoAnn's and I'm not even sure Michael's sells it. 

So I looked a little more, and found this

 There's plenty of it. It's not as soft, and this is going to be a "sandstone" Lithos rather than a "shale" one. But it'll work, and it's yarn that was hanging out unused in my stash. 

The next challenge was it recommended a "tubular" cast on, which I had never done before - basically you cast on about half the stitches provisionally (waste yarn - the orange yarn there) and then knit a few rows, and then alternate working a "live" stitch (the row currently on the needle) with picking up the loop of the very bottommost stitch, so it sort of folds.

I had to look it up. Yes I know there are tutorials for knitting things online, but they tend to be videos, and I prefer to have still photos I can refer back to. So here's the cast on with the book I used for reference (again, I think that was a JoAnn's purchase)

 So then you knit four rows stockinette, and then pick up the "purl bump" from the very first row every other stitch

 You take the provisional part out at some point. I didn't want to do it just yet, I was afraid I might have a stitch or two unravel if I didn't do it perfectly, and at that point I was tired:

 I did have to fudge a bit, doing some spaced decreases in the first row of ribbing, because I wound up with about 10 stitches too many; I miscounted. It won't look perfect, but it'll look good enough