Dear Bully,

I’ve been thinking alot lately about what sort of project I want to tackle next.  I finished my first grown-up sweater (I know!), and I’m feeling adrift.  Without a huge, mammoth, challenging project to carry around and agonize over, I just don’t feel complete.

I’ve been combing Ravelry, looking at cardigan after cardigan, weighing and measuring raglans versus set-in sleeves, thinking about the slow, steady reassurances of a bottom-up versus the heady thrill of a top-down construction.  I find myself lingering over buttons, and repeatedly measuring my bust and trying to find a way to measure my own shoulders (it’s harder than you’d think). 

Ironically, it took a pick-up truck to show me the light.  Parked at Lindy’s a few days ago, there was this 1980s Dodge pickup, back when they knew that fuel economy be damned, what people really wanted in a vehicle was lots and lots of plate steel.  Huge hood ornament, gleaming chrome bumpers, and an air freshener shaped like a pine tree hanging from the mirror.   The best part of this truck, as it sat there, glistening in the rain, was its color.  It was this intense shade of purple, the kind that grape-scented markers draw, the sort of purple that proclaims that Real Men Wear Purple, and coincidentally, So Does Royalty. 

Alas, I didn’t have my camera with me, so I don’t have any photographic evidence to show you guys.  But the really great part of this is: I already know the yarn that matches.  It’s at the shop, tucked down in a corner.  It’s sitting there, and in the bin it looks like a good Welches Concord Grapey sort of purple.  When you hold it up to the halogen lamp sitting there, it just intensifies, getting darker and deeper.  But lo, when you pull it out of the corner, and face the rest of the shop, uncertainty strikes.  Purple becomes a royal blue, the sort of color that all my fresh school folders would be every September, the color that I painted on my nails in the late 90s (rememeber when?) to give my mother a hard time.  You put it back in the light, it’s purple again.  Take it out, back to blue.    Was there ever a more perfect color for a FLS?

Yep, the February Lady Sweater (Ravelry link).  Oft-knitted (5045 people have knit it as of this post, according to Ravelry), diminuitively sized, and perfect for a Florida knitter.  Air-conditioned offices and movie theaters demand cardigans even at the height of July and August, and throughout October and into our faint-hearted "winters," sometimes that’s all you need.  You can wear it with a sarcastic t-shirt, or color-coordinate it with a dress and shoes and rock an evening wedding.  There’s even one hanging in the shop, which means that someone around here has done it before and could probably help me with that tricky "lace" stuff. 

I’m excited.  This is totally going to happen.  It’ll, y’know, happen on a glacial scale, because it takes me a long time to get around to doing anything, but stay posted.  Just, um….don’t hold your breath or anything.

–Emily

The February Lady Sweater is the design of Pamela Wynn, and can be seen (along with her other patterns) on her blog.

It’s happened to all of us.  Hannah posts the class schedule, you look it over, you get excited about a new yarn, you research a pattern (what did we ever do before Ravelry?  You mean I can look at every single picture of every single knitter who’s ever done the Koolhaas, and what yarn they used?)…..but then, you don’t follow up on it.  You mean to call the shop and register, but it’s Sunday, and the shop doesn’t open again until Tuesday, and by Tuesday you can’t even remember what you had for dinner on Sunday, much less that you had something you needed to do.   

Or you do call the shop to register, but apparently every other knitter in Tallahassee has beaten you to the punch.  Or you manage to sign up for one of those spots, but something comes up on the day in question, or no one else actually wanted to knit that object (what, are they blind?) so the instructor cancels, or there was this hurricane….

Like I said, we’ve all been there.  Hannah and the rest of the crew have been discussing what classes should be given a second show.  What was really popular at the time, and we need to address the spillover now?  Or maybe you didn’t see the beauty of something when the pattern was first published, but now that you’ve seen it in someone’s project gallery, knitted up in Noro or Silky Tweed, you’re realizing that you absolutely need it.

We’ve thought of a few that people have requested in the past.

The Falling Waters Wrap, for instance.

Or the February Lady Sweater.

What about the gorgeous Little Slip of a Thing bag?

Or the perennial favorite, Saartje’s Booties?

http://www.micropoll.com/akira/mpview/568898-154615