I've been furiously trying to get the last project done for the Winter issue of the newsletter so I can get it printed and mailed off (as it is, it's going to arrive in 2011, not 2010), but last night I realized that the sweater was going to have to take a trip to the frog pond. I had envisioned it as a raglan pullover. I don't know why—raglans are my least favorite garment style both in terms of appearance and in terms of ease of pattern writing—but that's the direction in which I was heading. And neither the sweater nor I was happy with the way it looked. Raglans with cables can be tricky if you don't get the math exactly right, and somewhere along the line my math went way wonky.

I ended up ripping out the entire yoke, and now I am back down to two sleeves and a body, both knit to the underarms. Plan B is to change the bodice to a modified set-in sleeve. It will work, but it's going to require another couple of nights of intensive knitting. The good news is that it should go more quickly now that I won't have a monstrous piece of fabric sitting on my lap.

These are the parts of designing that most knitters never get to see (why would we show them off?). I usually plan well enough ahead of time to avoid an epic fail like this. But it still happens from time to time. I'd much rather have an end product that makes me happy than one that I finished just to get it done.

Both the girls are home now for Christmas break, and I'm off to work at Camas Creek today. We all know what I'll be doing when I get home tonight . . .