Even though I’m in the process of finishing this sock and in the middle of knitting a yet-to-be-photographed sweater, I got bored and decided to start a new project.  I looked at the yarn stash and picked out this pink yarn, mostly because it’s a self-striping yarn and I’m into the self-striping thing right now.  I like how you can just keep knitting and the yarn does all the work for you, so that the next thing you know, you’ve got a lovely knitted thing that’s changed colors and patterns all on its own.

A few years ago, I took a knitting class in designing your own top-down sweater.  It’s not a very complicated process.  The first thing you need to do is determine how many stitches you are knitting per inch.  I used to be a lazy knitter who guesstimated and never bothered to knit a preliminary gauge swatch, but I learned my lesson soon enough.  Nothing says “You should have knit a gauge swatch” like a too baggy sweater that you spent three months knitting and looking forward to wearing.

Anyway, so today I knit a gauge swatch, and I did it in the round so that I’d have a more accurate stitch count, since I plan to knit a pull-over top-down sweater that I’ll be designing as I go.  I don’t have any interesting or funny stories to tell for today, particularly since my broken wing sock model headed back to Ventura this morning.  But some days it’s just like that:  all I do is sit around and knit and try to relax, because I know the minute I get back to work, I’ll be wishing that I could be at home sitting and knitting, even if it is just a gauge swatch.