Pink!

I was looking over my Ravelry designer's page the other day and I realized that out of the last 10 patterns I've released, the sample project has been knitted in green, blue or a combination of the two colors for 7 of those patterns!  Last year, I leaned very heavily toward using pink and purple yarns for my samples. I didn't plan this either time, it just happened that way.  But now that I realize I've been knitting very heavily in the blue/green family, I'm ready for a little change of pace!  Enter: PINK

This yarn was a purchase I made when I was in the middle of my worst days back in August.  I had completely lost the desire to knit (or do anything other than lay around watching tv, really), and I thought maybe yarn for a  new project would be just what the doctor ordered.

Turns out, choosing stitch patterns, swatching, measuring gauge, thinking about construction, and writing out a rough draft of a pattern while you are really ill is overwhelming.  No matter how much you want to knit or how much you like the yarn.  So even though the Loopy Ewe has the yarn here in just a few days, it sat, untouched, for a few weeks before I could muster up the energy to pick up my stitch dictionaries and take a look through to see if I could find some stitch patterns that would work for the idea I had.

The good news was that I did, indeed, find a number of stitch pattern possibilities that I liked.  I apologize for the terrible-ness of this swatch photo...I know you can barely make out some of those patterns.  And a sidenote: I washed this swatch with another project that had dye that bled.  Does anyone have a suggestion for removing dye from the swatch yarn?  I'm going to either have to reuse this yarn (that swatch is an entire skein!) or I'll have to order an extra skein because I won't have enough to complete the project without it.

Anyway, I swatched 9 different patterns and decided what I wanted to use.  Now it's just a matter of figuring out exactly how this project is going to go and writing out the rough draft.  It gets a little easier every time I do it, but everything work-related is still a little bit overwhelming.  Last week I returned to getting up with my kids in the morning and driving them to school, and being able to help out a little around the house.  This week I've been able to do a few errands away from the house, take a couple 45-minute walks, and cook dinner a couple times.  So I'm heading in the right direction, but really, just trying to do the "regular stuff" seems like a lot right now.  And it's driving me kind of crazy because with all the couch time I am still having, I would LOVE to be knitting a great knitting project right now.  I guess I just need it to be one that I don't have to write myself.  But I just did two patterns by other writers in August, so it's really time for me to get back to "work" knitting!

What's on your needles these days?