Tops and bottoms

First, I present Tilia. Done done done. This sweater is such a disappointment to me. You see, the top half of it wants to be roomy like a sweatshirt (a really comfy one), and the bottom wants to be a dressy fitted garment. I wore it all day, and the two halves were at war with each other the whole time. I kept tugging and fussing with the hem which crept up with every movement creating a blousy/frumpy/poochy look. I loved the way it looked on the waif model in the cover shot of the book: straight up and down and casual looking - the way I would like to look in this sweater. I thought it would be a good beater (as in something to wear everywhere). Instead I got LL Bean meets Dynasty. Poo! The sad thing is that I think shoulder pads would actually help (no, don't worry, I won't do that). While this isn't going to the frog pond, it won't be a favorite. Maybe if I stretch the hem out enough, I can make it a sweatshirt.
Here's what really gets to me, though: I have no one but myself to blame for this mishap. You see, there were warning signs right from the beginning: The ribbing and lace section seemed impossibly small (I stretched it out and said, "it will block to the right size"); the body, after ribbing/lace, seemed disproportionately large ("It will block out"); and the sleeves were looking a wee bit alien in length (OK, I did try to rectify this one, omitting the last increase round and had to modify sleeve cap to accommodate). Bottom line: The writing was on the wall from day one. Why didn't I listen to my inner voice? Blocking cannot fix everything! Repeat after me: "knitting is fun! knitting is relaxing! I love knitting!". See the Gallery for more thoughts.

I have taken to carrying the baby cable socks around with me for mindless knitting. This evening (after my photo shoot - thank you Lori) I had over an hour to kill before my Pilates class. Here's proof that you can knit in the car (no, I wasn't driving) and that a bored knitter with a self timer is a recipe for total geekiness. I won't even tell you how many ways I tried to photograph myself knitting.


I have made some progress on Project Walkway. I took out my favorite boxy sweater and measured it and then tried to sketch out an approximation of what I want to knit with the pea soup yarn (I can't help it, the name stuck). Knitter's math is better than say, algebra, or quilting - all those fractions - but it still stretches the limits of my right brain abilities. I want to knit it from the top down to avoid seams, but I can't seem to figure out the math. I'm thinking bottom up may be the easy answer, but I don't like the whole business of adding the sleeves to the body all at once. Help! Since this isn't a yarn I can just rip out easily, I don't have much room for futzing around.

In the meantime, I am conducting a taste test - but not while knitting. There are a slew of Halloween and Octoberfest ales out there and I decided to sample a few because autumn is my favorite time of year and it only stands to reason that there should be a celebratory brew. Here's my rating system:

1 = will only drink it if there's nothing else available besides the Bud/Coors/Miller trio
2 = will drink it if it's the $2.50/pint happy hour special
3 = may choose it if I'm in the mood for it
4 = will order it no matter what else is available
5 = will buy in cases and stock up while it's still in season.

So far, I have tried Gritty's Halloween Ale and Harpoon Octoberfest. Both rate a 2. What can I say, I like dark and nasty beer and these are a little too mellow for me.