Time to Reevaluate

I'm re-evaluating several of my WIP. Not because I don't like them. I do. I think they have merit, and I think if they were finished they would be stellar, and they are pretty darn charming right now. But I just don't want to work on them. But I still want to have what they will be when they are done. [Does this make sense? I confess that I'm most of the way through a Diet-Coke-with-Lime and Bacardi-Limon at this point. Mostly because I couldn't think of what would taste good with Amaretto.]

I spent my pretty long commute home thinking about how to rethink my feather and fan stole. I'm about 3 repeats in. It's pretty, but at this point in my knitting career, with so little time to singlemindedly knit, I just can't work a 4 row repeat pattern. I'm just not that together. I have trouble remembering to turn on the crock pot in the morning, even after I put the food together the night before and put the crockery part into the electric part, and it was plugged in and everything. [This has happened, but not today. It's just an example of the simple things that I have trouble with these days, so you can see why a simple lace pattern is taxing.] But I still want a stole. I'm thinking about making a garter stitch stole. How's that for dumbing it down. Get this. I'm thinking about using short row shaping, so that it ends up being kind of fluted. Shaped like the circle skirt that my mom made me for 4th grade chorus. Here's my concept:

Cast on X number of stitches. Work in garter stitch. Every, oh, I don't know, 10 rows, work a "short row" that is about (2/3)X stitches. My theory is that I should end up with something that is vaugely cone-shaped. Or trapezoidal. I'm not sure which. And, the varigated stripes would be vertical, which, is important to me, and the whole reason I didn't just do a dishcloth shawl. Horizontal stripes making a big arrow pointing to my generous derrierre. One of the things that I'll have to do to make this work is to mark which side is the top. Or, I could make it like a very wide garter stitch scarf. Either way would work.

The other project I'm rethinking is DH's red scarf. This pattern is just too darn fiddley and I can't work on it more than a couple rows at a time, and it's on [merely] size 7 US needles, and I just can't see ever getting it done at this point. I'm thinking of ripping it out and either doing a basic seed stitch scarf or finding one of those mathematically genious odd-number-rib patterns (maybe I'll make one up). Not sure yet.

It's all academic at this point - I want to finish this washcloth and then I'll move on to something else, like the wool/silk seed stitch scarf perhaps.