Trying to evict the hamster from my brain...

...because as I lie in bed awake at night, desperately trying to get to sleep, thoughts keep running around like a hamster on a wheel. Some knitting related thoughts frequently pop in for a visit. I appreciate the comments on my prior post. I already have some sock yarn waiting to be knit into gloves, and several batches of yarn "that I can knit into a scarf...", so the 2 options I considered were a shawl and a sweater. I also have started to accumulate laceweight yarn, so I decided against a shawl, so that is why I decided on a sweater. Someone might choose to point out that I have several batches of yarn already that are waiting to be knit into sweaters, but really, how often does reality come into play when one is thinking of starting a new knitting project? I have just under 1000 metres of yarn, so there's no way I would get a me-sized sweater out of these 3 skeins if I knit with 2 strands of sock yarn together. After I wrote the post, it occured to me that I bought 3 small skeins of medium grey laceweight alpaca at an embroidery shop which had a small yarn selection in Paris (the name of which I did not take note) that would work well as the carryalong yarn. I can't find them right now (The Gambler tidied up the room where the bag was sitting one day this week), but I vaugely recall there being 600-800m in total. Ironically, the 2 fingering weight yarns are the ones with grey in them, whereas the sportweight is all greens, but I don't think the laceweight is going to alter the colour of the fabric THAT much (see above note re: reality). Besides, the alpaca will make the fabric a bit warmer, I didn't have any specific project in mind for the laceweight, and to tell you the truth, I'm not someone who would generally wear completely grey garments/accessories. I went to the shop on our last full day in Paris shortly after it opened , and I swear to god that I stood in front of the shelf which held this yarn in at least 12 colours (multiple shades of brown and grey, cream, white, and black) for a good 10-15 minutes, sniffling from my cold, trying to decide what colour I should buy. I'm sure that the little old man running the place thought that I was a crazy person. So I have decided that I will use this yarn to knit a Kaleidoscope sweater. For which I already bought not one but 2 different pairs of skeins of sock yarns. What sweet irony that one of these sock yarns is from Indigomouse, who had suggested that I just mix different yarns together when I ranted about a "sock yarn stash reducing project" which required one to buy more sock yarn. It's designed to have a fairly loose gauge, has minimal seams, but because it is a cardigan it will make it easier to change yarns every row. I will do some swatches to determine whether or not the combined yarns look like crap or not. Theoretically, I could change needles when I switch from sportweight to fingering in order to minimize the tension differences, but I probably won't. And a big thanks to my SP11 secret pal for the package I recieved this week! It contained some lovely deep red merino/silk laceweight and a copy of the latest Vogue Knitting amongst other things. I haven't had time to photograph it yet (I am blogging from the hospital - waiting to find out if a patient is going to be shipped to a hospital with a Neuro ICU, or if I am going to end up admitting her), but I have found some interesting patterns in the magazine. There's one section which has some pretty avant garde (i.e weird) designs, one of which is a "scarf with sleeves"(#26 - the asymmetrical wrap). I really like the way that the right hand side of the garment looks, and was thinking that it might work out to just mirror it to knit the left side, but after some time lying awake at night mentally going through my stash for potential yarns, I moved on to trying to figure out how something that is a rectangle would end up nipped in at the waist. Which was great fodder for the hamster. But the more I think about it, the more I think that those bastards the stylists just pinned it in back. 9 and a half hours until my on-call week ends.