Of Cake and Startitis

I've been listless lately. (The irony that this post comes so soon after my "I'm working out!" post is not lost on me.) I think it's probably a result of the massive quantities of cake which entered my house one my husband's birthday. His 9th grade students wanted to prank him, and that somehow involved 21 cakes (They love him so much; it's so adorable). 12 of those cakes made it home in various states of consumption, but about 6 of them were untouched. Nether of us really like cake, but we have cake in abundance, so whenever we're sort of hungry or mildly peckish, cake is consumed.

That much cake cannot be good for a person. We're down to the last 4. I may need an insulin pump before we're through.

And so lately I've been feeling a bit like dirt. Just a bit, though. Nothing dramatic enough to make me anything more than listless.

My knitting has also been unmotivated as of late. I screwed up the wrap and turns on a corner of Yggdrasil, and so it languishes on the futon--near finished but never finished. I keep it near me so that I feel guilty, but that's been having mixed results, seeing as I haven't touched it in over 2 weeks.

In order to pretend like I'm doing something worthwhile with my knitting, while still not actually accomplishing the task at hand, I've been start stuff. Just stuff. I started some things for a friend's baby. I started another plushie. I swatched some interesting concepts using intarsia and dropped stitches (these are promising, so they may not end up being "just stuff"). Also I started a sweater, but I have noble plans to finish this one, so hopefully it will not also be cast aside into the stuff pile.

The pattern is Wakame in naturallycaron.com "Spa". I kid you not, the name of the yarn company is indeed a web address. I feel like that was a poor marketing decision. (Actually, here is a link to their poorly designed, tacky website that seems to have fallen out of the late 90's... I feel like this whole rebrand by caron, the parent company, was not nearly as well thought out as it might have been) The yarn is alright--it knits up beautifully, and it's quite soft, but it splits like you wouldn't believe. I'm still trying to decide how to block it. It's 75% : 25%  Acryllic : Rayon. Wet block? Steam block? Break the acrylic since it's a lace pattern? Would that melt the rayon? I don't know, but we're a ways out from that, so I've got some time to decide (see also, swatch and attack with the iron).

Next time I'll tell you about the first time I tried to make this sweater, and the poor yarn involved. It's a good story but it's a bit long to tack on the end here.