rainbows and storms

up until the new year i had been knitting steadily on the rainbow-striped dashin’ around gloves in anticipation of delivering them early this month.  and despite the many obstacles that tried to thwart me—social functions, becoming rather ill, xmas, work, new year’s—the current state of the gloves is reasonably impressive:

two gloves with four mostly-done fingers and two mostly-done thumbs each.  not a bad showing, really.  except… except that the last time any photographical evidence of the gloves surfaced on the blog, they looked like this:

 
a total of four complete fingers, with more on the needles.  and they had progressed to having four finished, bound-off, ends-woven-in fingers on one glove and three on the other before an inconvenient realization struck me.  i compared the nearly-complete gloves to the information i have available regarding their intended hands aaaaaaaand—the fingers weren’t going to be long enough.

a furious round of mental cursing later, i sought a second opinion from the bf.  he carefully hemmed and hawed for enough time to confirm the truth, causing me to edge toward franticness as “yay, nearly done!” slipped further away. 

i commanded the bf try the gloves on.  he did, confirming that the fingers ended too soon to accommodate his hands.  then i tried them on, only to have the same problem.  not good.  reproducible results meant that my hypothetical knitting disaster was on its way to theory-dom.

denial and irrational behavior reared simultaneously, leading me to refuse the reality screaming at me in rainbow colors and instead demand the bf decide whether i should leave the fingers alone until they could be tried on by their commissioner or unpick the woven ends and rip back a few rounds of each finger.  i already knew the answer, but it took a bit of a fight and some solitary confinement to accept it.

 
yeah, ripped.  the gloves will have to be tried on; careful observations, measurements, and calculations made; then a flurry of finger caps knit.  these gloves will be delivered before the month is up, there is no question.  but at present the evil, pony-ridden things are doomed to be utterly neglected while i work on projects for me that don’t totally suck sparkles and friendship.

which i would do, except that the only project i’ve been working on is yet another problem.

this photo of lace-weight cat barf seems innocuous enough (with lace, who can tell?), but picking up this project again after months of hibernation was less than soothing.  perhaps i am incapable of counting.  perhaps the pattern has errors.  either way, there has been enough discovery of mistakes—typically in the form of too few stitches—and resultant fudging to exasperate me regularly.

surprisingly, i’m still determined to knit it.  will a few wonky bits exist in the finished object?  yeah, probably.  it’s going to be a beautiful piece in spite of my frustrations, though, and i want to see it through.  also, knitting through at least two skeins of age-old lace stash is pretty satisfying.  like i’m really getting stuff done early on in this new year.  finishing a large-scale wip from august of 2012 and destashing?  i’m outdoing myself.

but should i find another major mistake all up in this project, i may have to frog a bitch.  just sayin’.