I ordered the rest of the yarn yesterday, and paid extra for 3-5 day shipping, so I should have it next week to get back to work on this. I'm really enjoying this project!
Yesterday I mentioned that I had to decide on the length before I began the armhole shaping. I had forgotten - there won't be any (shaping, not length). This is a drop shoulder sweater, which means the fronts and back are just knit as a big rectangle.
There is one interesting quirk. I decided I'd like to make this a v-neck cardigan. I can't stand regular v-neck sweaters, but in cardigans since I never button them, I've noticed v-neck versions seem to hang better - no bunching up around the neck. But to do that I am going to need to do shaping at the neck line, and with that strip of plain stockinette up the side I'm wondering if it's going to look funny when I begin shaping the neck and that disappears. When you have to shape away part of a pattern, it's not such a big deal - it just all kind of flows. But to have that very definite 'frame' around the pattern, then have it disappear right in the center front - I'm afraid that's not going to look so hot.
I considered trying to continue it ... as I do the decreases along the neck edge, add a stitch of stockinette on the other side of that strip (not make a stitch, but replace a pattern stitch with a stockinette stitch on each decrease row) - it's the stockinette that will encroach on the pattern, but the 6-stitch stockinette strip will remain intact up to the shoulder. But if I do that, there will be no corresponding stockinette strip in the back to match up at the shoulder. So that's kind of a dilemma. Ah-ha, I'm learning all the things designers have to take into consideration.
When I ran out of this yarn, I went back to work on the shawl for awhile.
I was having some trouble this time - the usual, running out of stitches in a repeat before I was done. I think I fixed them all. I didn't rip anything out, just un-knit back till I got it right. In one place I did have to make a stitch to match up the stitch count, because I simply could not find the lost stitch. Probably a missed yarn-over. The last row I did last night worked out, though, so I'm hoping it will be okay today. There's no guarantee. Lots of times with Triangles I'd knit a row which would be fine, and I'd think I had it fixed - and the next time across suddenly stuff would be messed up. That's what always frustrated me - simply not being able to figure out where stitches disappeared to.
Tyler's doing grand.
And I'm doing much better because I finally set up the air mattress! When he first came home, we decided it might not be a good idea for him to have to get on and off the air mattress, so we've been right on the living room floor all week. But that was about to do me in, and by last night Tyler was well enough that I was pretty sure getting on and off an 8" high air mattress was no longer going to be dangerous for him. So I set that up, and ah ... bliss. After sleeping right on the floor for a week, this is like heaven.
I called the vet yesterday and got permission to increase his food a little bit - that was the worst problem he was having, thinking he was starving to death. No wonder. He's used to getting 2 cups of food a day, and he was only getting 1/8 cup (that's only a spoonful) four times a day. It took me a whole week to use up one can of the special prescription food they provided! One can of food in a whole week, when his normal consumption would be the equivalent of almost a can a day. Not only did I feel bad because he was so hungry, but I was afraid he was going to start losing weight on so little food - and he's a little dog who didn't weight that much to begin with - and that the limited food would compromise his energy and health, right when he needed all he could to heal well. But at first I wouldn't risk feeding him more, because of the stitches in his stomach and intestines - I figured the amount they'd told me was the safest, then.
But after a week of that, I had to ask. And they told me as long as he was doing well (he is), to go ahead and put him back on his regular diet. But that seemed to go to the other extreme, to me. To go from 1/8 cup four times a day to suddenly a whole cup of food at one sitting, after abdominal surgery, didn't seem wise to me, despite what they said. So I'm going to increase it incrementally over the next week till he's back up to normal. But after getting so little for a week, even what he's getting now (1/4 cup 5 or 6 times a day) is keeping him quite happy.
Ask the vet if I can do something, then disregard what they say? Well, after this corn cob incident I'm never again going to second-guess myself when my intution is different than how things appear outwardly or what I'm told. Logically Tyler shouldn't have gotten the corncob where it was; my gut instinct was to move it anyway, but I didn't - and he got it. After he ate it, Tyler seemed fine, and my 'logic' was telling me not to panic, to just wait and see what happened. But my gut instinct kicked me out of bed at 2:00 a.m. and sent me online to check, which confirmed my intuitive fears. So from now on, when I have 'gut instincts' about Tyler (or anything else, for that matter), I'm going to learn to listen to them, despite logic or advice to the contrary.
So he's getting a slowly increased diet, he seems happy, I'm comfortable with it, and that's what we'll be doing over the next week.
I had Thursday and Friday off as vacation days, but didn't get to go on the scheduled camping trip because I needed to watch Tyler. At first I was disappointed I couldn't go, but I gotta tell you ... it was nice. Three days to do absolutley nothing but sit on the living room floor with Tyler and knit. Enforced inactivity, to keep Tyler quiet. Usually when I have time off, I keep myself so busy during it that I don't even feel like I had a 'vacation' when it's over. Not this time. It turned out surprisingly well. (As a bonus, the weather was pretty cold and crappy at the event - par for that course - and I would have probably been miserable and grumpy anyway).
I say "three days" because today I do have to get off my butt and do some things. But that's okay. And now's probably a good time to start.
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