I was soooo close to having my first FO of 2021. Ten rows!! So I tried on my non-shellseeker sweater to confirm that I liked the sleeve length before binding off. What?? I hated the way the stripes looked. While it looked great on my excel sheet, the huge stripes didn’t look so good on me. I went too fast increasing the stripe widths and too large an increase. I hadn’t tried on the sweater since just after I separated for sleeves. LESSON LEARNED – try on the sweater more frequently to confirm you like the way it looks, especially with a striped pattern!!!!
There went 6 weeks of knitting. To say the least I am now way behind on my sweater knitting goal for 2021. Oh well. The only saving grace is that at least now I’ve already started the sleeves, which I hate doing. So now it’s very simple stockinette so this is a pretty “brain dead” knit. And I do love the yarn so getting to knit with it longer isn’t so bad. Even though I like tunics, it was longer than I wanted so this is a chance to correct the length. Plus I had forgotten the pattern calls for splits between the front and back and I did want those so that will get fixed too. And yes, I’m standing on the bed. Our Florida rental doesn’t have a full length mirror.
Well this called for some therapy …. as in retail therapy. The only way I wasn’t going to hate knitting this sweater was to put it in a new pretty project bag with a matching needle case from Twisted Yarn and Fiber.

Until the project bag arrives, I also decided I need to cast-on a new project despite not having finished the sweater. So I cast on my Advent 2019 socks. These are a sock project that will be worked on sporadically over the year finishing before Advent 2021. It has 12 stripes of colorwork plus the toe/heel/cuff. I little more than a stripe a month. I’m looking forward to my first try at colorwork.

2021 is off to a rough start knittingwise but I’m trying to make the best of it. I just didn’t expect my plan to blow up so soon. The temperature sweater is probably the sweater that will fall off the plate but we will see. Hope your knitting year is going better than mine if you are a calendar year planner.