Yarn Along – Week 39 – am I crazy?

I can’t agree more with Ginny who in her last Yarn Along post wrote:

I think that I must be experiencing a strange knitting phenomenon.  Larkspur’s Phoebe’s Sweater is knitting up very quickly for me and I have passed the halfway mark.  However, I know good and well that if I were knitting with fingering weight yarn, that I wouldn’t have been able to knit the same amount of yardage in the same amount of time.  Does that make sense?  There’s something about knitting at 3.5 stitches/inch I guess–this particular sweater progresses so quickly and that motivates me to knit more often.

Absolutely the same happens to me. I waited most of last week for the wool for the my Phoebe’s Sweaters (yes, I’ll do three of them, one in orange for a 2-year-old, one in red for a 4-year-old and one in fuchsia for a 6-year-old…) to arrive and then I was away for the weekend. So it was Sunday evening when I finally opened this big box of softness and colour (literally dozens of skeins of Drops Big Merino, plus a few in Merino Extra Fine, all in all more than 50 skeins… )And I started knitting straight away. I had started with the one skein I ordered before but that was only 6 pattern repeats. And within 3 nights I have finished the whole body of the smallest size. I even kitchenered one shoulder seam together which I think I like better than the 3-needle bind off suggested in the pattern. And this when my yarn doesn’t even give me gauge. I need to knit 1.29 times more than the pattern says. And I ripped out several rows because I needed more height. It is really difficult to determine this when the recipient is in another country but I rather have a bit bigger armholes than something that sits to tight especially with this pattern. By the way the colour of the cardigan is more like on the wool picture, maybe a bit more muted or check last weeks post. So now I’m all in the Cardigan world. But with such quick progress I guess I will make it out of it soon again. And then I could work on a little something for me too. While waiting for the yarn last week I decided to start a little knit for myself because I really didn’t feel like knitting another sleeve for my brothers christmas jumper yet. So I started those How we roll wrist warmers only that mine are striped. I love the colour combination and it uses up some stash sock yarn. A win-win situation.And if my whole christmas knitting list wouldn’t be enough I decided to take part in a Secret Santa Swap at Marigold’s Loft. As if I hadn’t enough points on my “want to do before christmas”-list… Maybe you want to join too? Wouldn’t it be fun to receive a handmade gift from somewhere around the world?

And to finish this post up I’ll quickly guide you through my reading: I started a chic lit book very similar to the Queen Betsy Audio books I’m listening too but it is a on the side read so I even forgot the name of it. And I got the fourth of Jussi Adler Olsen books, which in German is called “Verachtung”, or “Journal 64” in Danish and probably also English. I really like the crime stories around Department Q and their cases are usually not for the faint-hearted but they resolve long forgotten crimes. Plus Carl Morck, even though with many problems, is not an alcoholic like most detectives from Scandinavian crime stories (yes, this is something that really bores and annoyes me, like with Harry Hole in Jo Nesbo’s books – To all the Scandinavians out there: do people in your countries really drink that much or is it just a boring stereotype for police officers?).

Joining Ginny at Small Things for her Weekly Yarn Along. What are you reading and knitting?