Comfort Knitting

I worked a lot of hours this week, and one night when I came home, tired and drained, I told Troy I was eating Captain Crunch cereal and KoolAid for dinner. He nodded understandingly and said, "Comfort food."

I thought of that yesterday as I started to feel bad in the afternoon and evening. I sat on the couch watching college football (Welcome back!) wishing for some knitting that I didn't have.

The summit scarf is going well, I am making progress. But it had too many short rows and things to keep track of. Plus I couldn't watch TV while doing it.

The socks I'm doing were in the car and I wasn't about to go get them. (Don't mock me! I wasn't feeling good.) Plus they were at a point I had to think about them; it wasn't just knitting round and round.)

The lace scarf was definitely too much to handle.

And then I realized: I need comfort knitting. Some straight stocking stitch in a wool I enjoyed. Rows long enough that I could knit for a while before I had to turn around. Pieces big enough that I would be knitting for a while before I had to think about things like shaping.

Lucky for me I had prepared for this situation. Just on Friday night actually, I took a fresh look through the Ravelry database for a tunic pattern for this wool:

that I raveled from this sweater from Goodwill:

I wasn't sure what I wanted in a pattern, but there were a lot of patterns I knew I didn't want. I've been looking for at least six months and had never really found anything. (I found one pattern I liked, but all the examples on Ravelry didn't really fit right, so I didn't bother with it.) And then, boom!, on Friday I found two. Maybe it's their new pattern search function. Maybe I just hadn't noticed these. Or, maybe it was because I thought this wool was a bulky weight and when I finally swatched it earlier in the week, it turned out it's more like a DK weight. Different pattern set for that--big difference!

In any case, this afternoon, I cast on for this sweater by Just call me Ruby. (The pattern is published on Knitting on the Net.) I'll be shopping at Red Purl for some white or off-white to do the colourwork. (Might be the Rowan BFL that I made Troy's sweater out of. We'll see.)

My favourite part? The "turtleneck" is actually cowl. It's a separate piece and you can wear it or not based on the weather. Look at the pattern for a picture of the sweater's actual boatneck. It's nice!

And it worked: I felt comforted. Now, however, I'm wondering if I'm crazy to start another project. But how could I tell myself no? I was all pathetic laying on the couch...giving myself those puppy eyes. Please?

By the way, my new pillow was wonderful to use as I was sitting on the couch. So comfy on my back, and I'm still loving it!