FLAK

Today I:

• had black tea and cereal with soy milk for breakfast
• had a bag of Fritos for Second Breakfast
• am eating microwave tofu lasagna for lunch
• am guzzling black coffee
• wish I could somehow be paid to knit... leisurely

FLAK

Sunday morning I put some sleeves on BBB's cardigan and then devoted myself to my neglected FLAK knitting. Here you see my diligent knitting assistant guarding my knitting diary, a bag of Bear stuffing, my coffee, instructions for a different knitalong (one I am not even in - long story) and one of my FLAK shoulder saddles.

For those of you coming late to this blog who are not In The Know, I'm using "chocolate" colored Wool of the Andes from KnitPicks on US #6 straight needles. I did the cable swatch with US #6 dpns, and the danger of randomly dropping cable stitches off the ends freaked me out so much that I had to go and and buy straight needles. I haven't decided if I am going to make this sweater entirely flat - it begins flat, then joins in the round, apparently - we'll just have to wait and see what my emotional tension levels are by the time I really have to address this question.

I bought this sock yarn at Windsor Button with the straight needles. Obviously, I don't have enough sock yarn, since I am continually buying more. (1200g is not enough!) I am very excited about this yarn. I am almost tempted to make it my Knitting Olympics project... assuming I can make anything my Knitting Olympics project for more than 30 minutes altogether.

Urgh. Let's move on.

FLAK Back

I got as far as an inch in to the back of the FLAK sweater yesterday before I realized I had one of the saddles backwards. Do you see those live stitches, tied up on yarn? They have to face the neck. I had one facing outwards.

There may be some of you out there who would say that this is not a big deal, no one would notice if the braid isn't exactly mirrored on the shoulders. Ha! I laugh at your optimism.

I dropped all the stitches on that saddle, reattatched it properly, and began picking up the pattern with the loose yarn ends. This was actually going fine for a while until I noticed that I had developed a twist between the "new" and "old" section of the pattern. Okay, I can deal. I untwisted it and fixed it. Then I was almost done and I realized I had and extra moss stitch at the join. Urgh. Where'd that come from? I dropped it, looked at the slack yarn that blocking would not fix, and frogged the entire back.

The above photo was where I was around 10 pm last night. My waves are mirrored, even my braids. I really don't care if my horseshoes hang down or up, just as long as they're recognizably horseshoes. I know there are some of you out there (hopefully not the same people with such a laissez faire attitude about cabling symmetry) who have substituted cables and filler stitch, but I'm not one of them. This is, to be frank, my first adult sweater, and I don't really feel like pushing the envelope that far.

Last night, I;

• had miso soup for dinner with half a beer
• watched The Mothman Prophecies, The Interpreter, Danny Deckchair, and Dark Shadows (revival)
• had tater tots for lunch