Retreating From the Edge

A week ago Monday, I crocheted another yellow beret (which looks just like the last one) and as I was reaching for another skein of yarn, I said..."Whoa! Whatever happened to not going nuts with this?"

See, having learned a few things over the years, I could see that I was on the brink of an obsessive attack. Now, this is not an un-useful thing to have happen. In fact I almost always let it happen on the rare occasions that it involves cleaning. Or taking down a cabana. Or yard work. (Okay, it would actually be kind of helpful if that kind of obsessive attack happened more frequently. Like more than once a decade. But.)

But deciding to say, give in to the impulse to reread the works of an author who has written dozens of books, for example, or to crochet a hundred berets? Not only are these less useful obsessions, but they can lead to behavior like staying up late saying things like 'only twelve more rounds until I change to the band' or 'only five chapters more to finish reading all of the Dick Francis books from the 60s.'

Which is a roundabout way of saying that for the sake of my sanity, I decided I needed to take a break from hats and mittens. To knit something small, yet different. To maybe put a dent in the growing collection of baby yarn:


As you can see, even the baby sweaters are traveling in pairs. It's actually kind of useful, because doing two projects in a row in the same yarn means I only have to swatch once. And in the case of the second sweater, I'm almost totally winging it (I'm doing something like a baby sweater I made about ten years ago, and haven't bothered to look up the pattern I used then.) But I'm using the baby raglan (which is from one of Carole Barensys' patterns) to gauge the size. So, I knit the body until it was as long as the body of the first sweater, on the same number of stitches (plus a few extra on account of cables), and then split for the sleeves. I'll try picking up stitches for the sleeves...if it looks funny, I'll just knit them separately and sew them on (though I much prefer to do something this small in one piece if I can).

For a wonder, not only did I have buttons in the right size in a reasonable color for this yarn, but I had enough for both sweaters (the second one will button at the shoulder, so as to give plenty of room to let the baby's head through).

Even if I have enough of this yarn left for a third sweater, I think I'll pass though. No point in trading one obsession for another!