Life After Christmas Carol

I'm tired . . . exhausted . . . Christmas'ed out. I've actually threatened to start playing Easter music, just to get the Christmas Carol songs out of my head. Either that, or some of Hockeyman's head-banger style rock music. Not that Alan Menken's score isn't wonderful but I'm just tuckered out and want the music in my head to go away.

I've spent the last 4 days in sweats, sitting in my recliner, working on the one knitted Christmas gift I'm likely to have time for this year. (That's not counting a couple old projects that were nearing completion well before Christmas Carol kicked in, that I must keep quiet about, since loved one's may check in and spoil the surprise).

This gift, however, is for Dancing Diva and is not a stealth gift . . . at all. After all, she is a "teenager" and her tastes have grown beyond my ability to forecast or match. So when she asked me if I could reproduce this, I gave her the go ahead to pick the yarn herself. In all fairness to PB Teen, I won't be reproducing it exactly like their design.

For one thing, the Stupid Finger still won't tolerate that much knitting with 100% cotton yarn. I can work for a little while on washcloths, then I have to move to something softer, since the ol' digit is still stiff and achey (stupid finger!). So Dancing Diva chose some inexpensive acrylic instead (in massive quantities, I might add - did you see the size of that skein?!?)

In addition, stockinette stitch in acrylic won't lay flat, no matter how much you try to make it. So garter stitch it is. And my version is being made on 10-1/2 needles, so as to give some speed and, incidentally, drapey softness to the whole project.

The thing she liked best about the PB Teen version is the random stripes, so I'll try my best to make my version as random as possible.

Given my level of exhaustion, random would probably be achieved, whether I tried or not.

Random good, counting bad. Now if I could get enough energy to do some laundry, before I run out of sweats.