Knitter Monkey

Yesterday I thumbed my nose at the whole no-alcohol-on-Sunday thing and made up a pitcher of Bay Breezes and started drinking. A couple of drinks later, a friend came over and somehow we ended up at Barnes & Noble with me lurching around looking at knitting magazines, which is something I always do - I pick up one copy of every knitting magazine I can find, and then I look at every pattern to see if there are any worth buying, which is usually like one out of ten. A magazine that I pretty much never ever like is Vogue Knitting - the patterns are always a little weird, a little trendy, a little, I don't know, time-consuming? So I almost didn't pick it up this time, except my friend liked the skirt on the cover and I tended to agree but didn't think it was actually knit.

It is knit! On size 3 needles. A skirt, on size 3 needles, do you know how long that is going to take? I will let you know, because I just ordered a stupid amount of Koigu KPM to make it out of.

Anyway, has anyone seen this issue? It's a delight! A couple of the little "Roman Holiday" sweaters are totally cute, there's a sleeveless top in the Riviera section that is pretty, and the "Delicates" section (which includes the skirt) is so nice I want to knit all of it right away right now. In fact, I cast on for the quilted lace camisole with the new Plymouth Royal Bamboo silk yarn last night. I have been kind of lackadaisical knitting-wise lately because there hasn't really been anything I was super-excited to knit - all the patterns I want to try are winter things and since it's just spring I'd like to get in at least one or two other things I could use/wear in summer before I give in to winter knitting (and my huge pile of Malabrigo). But the camisole and the skirt I want to knit like RIGHT NOW, and it's nice to have a knitting mission again. In my lull, I knit one sock (yes, one), a baby gift, and a monkey toy (adapted from the bear pattern in the Jean Greenhowe books!). I also knit the Lelah top, but it came out sized all wrong because, apparently I am a gauge disaster. So that's sitting unfinished and unloved.

I hope my gauge problem doesn't strike again with this camisole; I always do a gauge swatch but I think maybe it's too small. I'll cast on thirty stitches but only knit five or six rows, or I won't do them in pattern because the gauge says it's in stockinette but then when I'm calculating measurements I'm sure I'm using the stockinette numbers in my head. And I *really* can't swatch in the round - I read the article about doing it, but it requires cutting the yarn like ten times! I always frog out my swatch and use it in the project, and if you cut the yarn, well, that's the end of that, right?