Gah, cardigan.

Holy mother of god, how I hate this cardigan I am currently knitting. I am only about halfway up the back of it, and, were this not my mother's birthday gift, which must be in the States no later than the 25th of May, I have every confidence this would be my very first Unfinished Object, left to languish for a long, long time, possibly forever. I love the yarn. I just hate knitting with the yarn. I have tried every pair of 5mm needles I have, rosewood, bamboo, plastic and aluminium (I think that leaves cassein, which I don't have, probably wouldn't make any difference, and am not buying for this bloody project), and the sad fact remains that this goddamn yarn just doesn't have enough give to make knitting with it a pleasure. I am just going to have to suck it up and suffer my way through this cardigan, and all I can say is she better goddamn love it.

On a happy note, I finished the Airy Scarf, and it is very pretty. There are a couple of errors in it, but ripping back mohair is a nightmare, so I just fiddled with the blocking, and when I wove in the ends, I faked a couple of dropped stitches, and it looks fine. It is as light as a cloud, very, very soft, and doesn't itch at all. I think, since I have a ball of cream(ish) kidsilk haze that I will make my mom one to go with the %$£@! cardigan, which is a lovely rich, fudgy brown (really, the yarn is gorgeous, even though we hates it forever) and that way I have her mother's day gift taken care of as well. The other half of the ball will make the same scarf for my mother-in-law. They live five thousand miles apart; the odds of them wearing the same scarf to the same event are, to put it mildly, highly unlikely.

So now I am working out my reward for making it through this sweater. My reward will probably be yarn. Sock yarn, I am thinking, because I desperately want to teach myself to knit socks, even though I fear double-pointed needles. Sock yarn is just so damn beautiful, and the longer I chug along on this cardigan, the more I come to appreciate the concept of small projects. I am on a mad, mohair-conquering high, so I think I'm ready for socks. And more lace. There are so many things I want to make, and this sweater is not among them. I love knitting for other people, in fact, I probably enjoy it more than knitting for myself, which always feels vaguely selfish, but socks? I need socks. I deserve socks. Socks are nearly Puritan knitting, so wholesome and practical are socks. OK, so I plan on buying some incredibly extravagant ebony dpns and cashmere sock yarn, but eh, they're still just socks. The whole 'use cheap stuff you don't really like while you're learning' philosophy has never worked for me at all. What got knitting to stick for me this time was firmly rejecting the crappy acrylic and buying some nice merino. There is a place for acrylic, I concede, and that place is usually baby stuff, because the little buggers puke and crap and drool all over everything, and you need to be able to just throw their stuff in the washer. Also, you can practically watch them grow in real time, so yay, acrylic. I guess.

Oh god, I want to knit something other than that cardigan. Help me.