Starmore Abalone, Oh NO!

Last night I was happily knitting away at Thursday night knitting class at Village Yarn and Tea. I knew I was knitting more tightly because my level of work stress. So I decided to check to see how much tighter I was knitting.

Actually I hate my job. Ok, I don't *hate* my job. I love what I do. I just don't like where I'm doing it. I have a yucky boss(that is a nice way to put it).

I hate that my work stress is affecting my knitting too!. See the difference? Yikes.

So I had to start something different. Yes I could have continued working any number of UFO's sitting around but no, I wanted to start something NEW! I wanted a mindless project! So it is this sweater

from this book

With this yarn.

I'm trying to keep my guage consistent. I must thank Karen of Two Swans Yarns who I just recently met in-person. She's a very kind person and I checkout her blog daily and on this recent entry, I learned more about making a guage swatch. I just hate doing guage but it is worth the time. You'd think I'd *know* this after knitting 15 years but I still hate doing it.

I squirm and try to justify not doing it. "Oh, it won't matter if its a bit big. You bought two extra skeins just in case" "The guage is right on without blocking..the instructions don't say anything about a blocked guage swatch", blah blah blah. There is just no getting around it!

I wrote Karen an e-mail asking a dumb question(are you sure I need to block the swatch?) and I knew the answer but I just didn't want to go to the trouble. Really...it is a lot less trouble to take the extra time now than to have a sweater that doesn't fit! I'm glad I did because I had to go down 2 needle sized to get the guage after blocking. My sweater would have been too big. Thanks Karen!