Sick Days and Daisy Dukes

I got bowled over by a summer cold yesterday, completely out of the blue. No sniffly warning signs, no dry-cough indicator. Just woke up yesterday morning and proceeded straight to the moaning stage. Where normally I would soldier through and keep on trucking through my regularly scheduled life with no regard to what my body was trying tell me, I thought I'd try something different this time around and actually take a break. So I came home early yesterday and ended up staying home again today. The past 48 hours have been a tough regimen of naps, tea, movies ("Shortbus" was not what I expected--wowzas), and more naps.

Having said all this, I'm now at the antsy "everything in my apartment bores me, but sitting upright for more than a few minutes feels like dying" stage. And then I remembered, Oh yeah. I have a blog! So far this post has taken me about an hour to write because I keep putting my head down on my desk and taking a little catnap. That sounds more sad than it really is. I think. Actually, I feel a lot better!

Here, help me with my knitting:

I started working on the daisy dukes a while ago, loosely based on the Sweetheart Shorts pattern over at Knitpicks (I keep typing that as sweatheart shorts, but that's...not at all what I'm going for). I decided to use some navy blue cotton yarn because I couldn't find any denim at any of the yarn stores within public transit distance. I also accidentally threw away the label, so I can't tell you exactly which yarn or dyelot I'm using. I know, I know. A knitter's biggest faux-pas. Alls I can say is that it's been a rough few months, and well, it's just yer basic navy blue cotton dishtowel yarn, so I think we'll be ok.

I also decided to use the pockets from an actual pair of jeans instead of knitting my own. The tricky part was figuring out how to knit the front so that the pockets from the jeans would line up. I spent the entire time while I was waiting for a standby flight to Minnesota last April inexpertly plotting the slope of the pocket and matching it to my gauge. I felt veeeery smart when I was done, let me tell you!
The knit pocket actually lines up perfectly with the jean-pocket, but I moved the knit piece askew a little so you can see what an awesome job I did with that pocket shaping.

So--I will knit the front and the back in two separate pieces and then join them together at the bottom of the pocket. I already had to rip out and restart once because I am knitting the front and back pieces separately on straight needles, but my gauge was taken from knitting in the round. I know, I know--another big knitting faux pas to so brashly assume my gauge would be the same (unless you're a knitter, I know you don't care a lick about gauge, but trust me, it can be a real brat). Anywho, easily remedied by going down a needle size for knitting the front and back and then switching to the larger needles when I joined the pieces for working in the round.

And then I realized my second mistake. The sweetheart shorts pattern has you start increasing for shapeliness around the hip and bottom region after about an inch and a half. I figured (again, oh-so-brashly) that my pockets would be about an inch and a half and I'd start shaping as soon as I joined the pieces. Well, this would have actually been fine. If I'd remembered. Instead, I was so excited at working in the round that I whipped off several rows and now I'm at about two and a half inches. So here's my Dilemma Emma, do I rip the three rows and go back to do the shaping correctly? Or do I soldier through and keep on trucking through my regularly scheduled knitting?

No, don't say it. I know what you're going to say. I know what I have to do. I have to. My conscience will never let me live with subpar knitting. Even for a pair of daisy dukes. I will have to rip it, and rip knowing full well that I may very well drop all those cast-ons at the bottom of the pocket and just have to start completely over. It's ok. I'm still going to be sick another few days. I still have plenty of daytime TV to catch up on. *sigh*

Oh, but here's the exciting part that I need to figure out soon: I want to intentionally knit little tears in the bottom hem of the shorts--like Kay's Raspy sweater HERE. I can probably figure it out myself, but it would probably be a good idea to track down a copy of Denim People to get the full story.

And on that note, I feel another nap coming on. Or some tea. But not together. Bad combo.

Emma's Feel Better Tisane/Tea/Whatever-Cuz-It-Makes-Me-Feel-Better Drink:

Cuppa hot water
A coupla scoops of honey
A teaspoon-ish of fresh grated ginger
Half a squeezed lemon

Ahhh....