Ignoring the fact that there is still a list of things yet to do on Olivia’s backpack, I’ve started mom’s sweater! It is already clueing me in to the fact that it is going to be a pain in the rear to knit, and yet, I’m enjoying myself. What does that say about me?

I’ve completed the first cable row, and lost one of my stitch markers in the process. I was away from home, and quite annoyed.

Cotton is weird. I didn’t detect any weirdness while knitting my Mother’s Day Diagonal hat, nor did I suspect while knitting my swatch. But now that I’m actually knitting the sweater, it’s weird. The stitches move. That’s the best way to describe it. Maybe it’s just the ribbing, but I’ll look down and see scoliosis, freak, and then run my fingers along the rib and it jumps back into place. It is quite unnerving. Next, based on my mom’s body measurements, I should probably be making the medium, but looking at the pattern schematic compared to measurements of a sweater at home that she likes the fit of, the small is right on. There is a 4 inch difference between the small and medium sizes. That seems a bit excessive to me. The medium looks like it would be too big for either measurement, but she buys mediums in the store. (This is brit sizing, however). After my experience with Nate’s Manly Sweater, I’m nervous about knitting the smaller size and getting something that is too small in the armholes again. That Manly Sweater had some other issues as well though, so I don’t really know which way is up. This is only my third sweater, and the first one (which is perfect in every way!) had no sleeves. Concern #3 stems from the fact that I’m making the smallest size and it is looking pretty big to me, like, big enough for me who is considerably larger than my mom in every possible way.

I apologize for the above, disjointed ramblings.

In other news, Abigail has been invited to THREE !!! birthday parties in the last two days. We have started taking Abby into an isolated room and informing her privately to save us all from the hours and hours of crying and carrying on Olivia performs on such occasions when she is not invited. There is no exaggeration here. My question is, do you think that the knitted dolls that have been gracing Poor Miss Finch recently would make nice birthday gifts for 6 year old girls, or are they too “homemade”? Are you all sick of reading about them and cringe at the thought of seeing a couple more? I think they’re cute. They’d definitely be cheaper than store bought gifts, and considering we have three parties coming up in the next couple of weeks, that’s a plus. I don’t want to send my daughter to a party with a dork gift however. What do you think?