Wedding bell blues

Yeah. A bit big for my britches, obviously, thinking I was going to get a shawl knitted for a wedding which was less than a week away - a week in which I spent two whole days in a frenzy of packing and organizing and washing up, one solid day on the road, and two more days careening hither and yon to various pre-wedding festivities, dragging a nearly-four-month-old along all the while. I would offer to share what I was smoking, but it's illegal in 37 states. I did try and cast on for the Simple Yet Effective Shawl, but there was another problem, too. The flippin' yarn. Noro Silk Garden Sock. Drop-dead gorgeous in the skein, meltdown-inducing and angst-making on the needles. Now, I will be the first to admit that, as a knitting knoob, my lack of skills might have played a significant factor, but this.yarn.does.not.give. Any. It's like concrete string. No stretch whatsoever. Add to that the fact that I was having a tough time seeing the stitches because of all the little fiddly (yet lovely, mind) color variations and intermittent fuzzy bits. I tried, swore, frogged, tried again, swore, frogged... After a few repeats of this, I decided I needed a less stressful project for the countdown to my first 14 hour drive with an infant, and picked the hat up again. Noro - I'll deal with you later. Maybe much later. For now, just sit there and look pretty. Good yarn.

Meanwhile, I got to work on the decreases for the kiddie hat, which required switching to the DPNs. This was the first time I'd worked with DPNs, and while it was very interesting and made me feel very swanky, it was also a bit like wrestling with a porcupine in heat. The transition-y bits from needle to needle were a bit gappy, but nothing too bad since I'm generally a pretty tight knitter. I whizzed through the decrease rows and had started banging out the i-cord topknot (which I REALLY enjoy doing for some reason) when I noticed a little, shall we say hole?, near the top of the hat. Long story short, I had dropped a stitch, not noticed, and - due to the nature of the decrease rows - created a situation which was not a simple matter to fix. I'll spare you specifics, but imagine, if you will, the colorful language as I rip back this baby hat for the nth freakin' time, put 96 stitches back on the DPNs, then go around untwisting the stitches one by one... By this point, I was developing serious baby hat fatigue as well as a bad cold, so I bailed.

I haven't knitted since then - 4 days ago. 4 days of fevers, nose blowing (mine and my daughter's), endless-seeming 900 mile road trips, motels, truck stops, too much crappy food, snowstorms, herbal tea, fly-by-night backseat diaper changes, need-a-nap desperation... Arrive home to find that, in my absence, the Knit Picks Options needles that I ordered had come, triggering a bad attack (exacerbated, no doubt, by all the phlegm-induced dizziness) of startitis. This is not so good, considering that I still have to finish that dang.baby.hat so I can gift it before the weather turns...

I'll close for now with a shot of me, my daughter (who loves to watch me knit), and the baby hat in happier times...