Knitting Knightmare

People knit for a variety of reasons. My reasons include the traditional pleasure in making something, but I also knit because otherwise I live entirely in my head, and doing something with my hands means I can get out of that space a little bit. I've also had lots of trouble over the years with anxiety, and knitting relaxes me in ways nothing else ever has - not yoga, not meditation, not that weird therapist who didn't take any record of our meetings and could clearly not remember me from week to week, and certainly not the antidepressants.

Of course, that's when everything is going well.

Last night I was zipping along the last sleeve of Elsewhere, minding my own business, being all Zen and at one with the world, and thinking how lucky I was to have bought enough wool - 8 skeins at 138 yards a skein (that's 1104 yards for those of us who cannot (or will not) carry the one) - to finish this pattern that called for 950 yards of this exact same yarn with a bit to spare.

Then, with six inches of the last sleeve to go, I ran out of yarn.

Let me just say that again, I ran out of yarn.

I probably could have avoided the panic by just buying more, but a) I wasn't sure the store still had this colour; ii) the store is a long ways from here and I don't have much time these days; and 3) I am not spending another penny if I don't have to. (I was feeling stubborn yesterday. Well, more stubborn than usual, anyway. It's relative.)

I unravelled my gauge swatches and knit with them, and dear reader, I just made it. Just. By the proverbial skin of my teeth. This is how much is left (the dog is for scale):


"Dude. Don't you think you cut it a little fine there?"

The bad part is that the right cuff is two rows shorter than the left, but I choose to consider that a style quirk rather than a design flaw. Magical thinking, that's us.



It's not that obvious, is it? I mean, here the sleeves are side by side. Usually I wear my sleeves on opposite sides of my body. Also I wave my hands around a lot when I talk.

So now the darling thing is finished, and I love it dearly, even though I got myself all in a tizzy and couldn't even see straight last night over the possible lack of yarn to finish the last half inch. (I said to myself, is it the end of the world if you have to wait a few days to get new yarn to finish this? to which myself said a resounding YES, actually. Yes it IS the end of the world.)

But I am happy with this:



And, just as importantly, so is the Wonder Dog.



So that's okay then.