Design Hazards

In December, I decided to design my own top-down V neck sweater (or tee, depending on the yardage I have left for the sleeves) using yarn leftover from other projects: Valley Yarn Northampton in grey (242 yards leftover) from my boatneck bluebell sweater and Cascade 220 in a grey/white twisty tweed (385 yards leftover) from my satchel project. I did a lot of math to get the top part of the sweater to fit just right. And it does! Once I split the sleeves from the body, I decided to wing it. And that has now cost me 2 froggings of the body. Hmpf. The first go round, I did some bust darts on the front and decreases in the center back. The back looked really bad. Lots of puckering. And the stripes looked horrible in the back with the decreases. I knit almost down to my belly button before I frogged that back. Then I tried to do the decreases on the sides, 2 stitches from the place where the sleeves were split, so there were 4 stitches between the decreases. Two things: 1) The decreases started too late and there was bunch of fabric bagging under my arms, 2) the deceases were too close together (both row wise and stitch wise) creating a weird angular shape... basically the shaping was too dramatic. I finished ripping just a few minutes ago. The picture below is half-way frogged back. Yes, that's right, I made it all the way to the waist shaping before I finally admitted to myself that the bust shaping was NOT going to block out. Anyway, away I go again. This time I am starting the bust shaping right away (2nd row after splitting the sleeves from the body), I am doing the decreases 6 stitches away from the center of the under arms (12 stitches between) and I am decreasing every 3rd row instead of every other row. I'm crossing my fingers that the "third time's a charm."

(Also pictured: my breakfast of cream of wheat with cocoa and sucanat and a mug of earl grey in my Washington DC mug. The inauguration is only 2 days away!)

I received a hand-me-down food dehydrator over the holidays, so I'm giving it a go with 4 naval oranges. The kitchen smells divine right now! The only trouble is that the dehydrator didn't come with any instructions, so I'm not sure when to stop it. I guess I'll just keep checking. I'm planning to use these oranges with some rosemary from my herb garden and maybe a few pine cones for a potpourri in the living room.

In other news, Rocky seems to have cabin fever. He's been moping around the house for a few days. I think I know why. We haven't been for a run in a week because of the very cold weather and a bad head cold that I had. Here's the depressed pooch. (I'm not sure why he sits on the stairs like this... it must be comfortable.) Don't worry, buddy, we're going for a run today. I promise!!

I went into the basement this morning to start blocking the basketweave baby blanket, and found Chloe and Cheshire sleeping their heated cat bed. Chesh woke up for the photo op, but Chloe was having none of it. Must have been a long night of pouncing on each other and wrestling.