In sickness and in... well, lots of sickness here

My knitting goal for this year (besides getting my Xmas knitting going early and in some kind of premeditated fashion) is to make myself a sweater. The fact that I've never done anything even remotely like a sweater doesn't really faze me. I'm not one of those people who looks at something like a sweater and thinks "oh, how hard can it be, really?" Nope. I realize that it probably is indeed quite fiddly in places, but my thing is that I really don't see why that should get in the way of me making one anyhow. Usually, this works out OK, and, as the Yarn Harlot likes to say (and I'm paraphrasing here) "it's just knitting, nobody is going to die." Well. Let's just hope I'm not the first knitting-audacity fatality. Now to decide on a pattern... I've been spending most of my free time lately hanging out on Ravelry and rubbernecking at all the gorgeous sweaters. I'm more of a cardigan person, and I like round yoke designs and cables and probably about a million other things that are all wrong in a first sweater, but there you go. No harm in looking.

My other obsession now is recycling yarn from thrift store sweaters. Oh boy, yes. I actually love the process of taking the garment apart, ripping it out, and winding the yarn back up. There's something about winding yarn into balls that I find very relaxing (though slightly less so in the presence of a toddler and a cat). Getting a sweater's-quantity of really nice yarn for $2.50 ain't bad, either.

Outside, it's winter with a vengeance. Bitter cold, and the ground has been white for most of the time since Christmas. Inside, it's like sick bay. We can't kick these colds, and an intestinal thing ripped through here a few days ago, resulting in one pretty sick kiddo and parents in various stages of incapacitation. Winding yarn and wiping noses, yep, that's the order of the day. And lots of laundry.