hilarious housecleaning

Oh my gods.

When I first started knitting, I read a story by the Yarn Harlot about this huge, gigantic, ENORMOUS sweater that her friend knitted. The entire time, her knitting group was like – Dude. That sweater is going to be WAY too big. The entire duration, the knitter denied it. They were like – DUDE – You are knitting a HOUSE.
Denial.

Finally, she cast off. She held up the sweater. And so did another knitter. Who put it on over BOTH of them.

I personally never swam that particular river of knitterly denial. Until last night.

A little over a year ago, I cast on over 750 stitches on a SIZE 8 needle, joined in the round, and happily started knitting away to make a circular scarf that was going to be bang on avant-trend. (Have you seen all of the circular scarves this Fall? Yeah.)

I was also spinning the yarn for it, and it was all going actually incredibly quickly, but then a major distraction (6′ 1″ and male in nature) hit my life, and pretty much all knitting and spinning ground to a halt.

So, a year later, a full year later, I started cleaning house. The joy of cleaning up and out yarn, is that I get inspired! And re-inspired! I came across the scarf, which had been serving as functional decoration, in a bowl. I thought “Goddamn! This is only 2 ounces of spinning (and then knitting) away from being done! How exciting! Let me get to work!”

So, I got to work. I spun that yarn in a few hours, I washed the skein, I set it to dry in the oven, and I cast on that very night.

Fast forward a week. I’m casting off last night. It is taking… For. Ev. Er.
I’m watching a movie (Wrinkle in Time, which by the way, is not bad for a 1990s production, I totally enjoyed the first hour) and I’m casting off… and casting off… and casting off… and casting off…

I start thinking to myself “Jesus, how many stitches did I cast ON?!”

I finally finish (eyes drooping, yawning HUGELY at 1.30 in the morning, I’ve been casting off for over an hour) and I hold this thing up.

It is massive. And I mean – MASSIVE. I put it on. It almost hits The Ground.
This mothertrucker is TEN FEET LONG!!!

Dudes. I just knitted a 10 foot circle.

Color me – surprised.

Add to that – you’re gonna love this.

I knit stockinette.

So guess what this mother effer did after I got it all nice and cast off?

Yup. That’s right. Rolled itself into a tidy little tube.

Jeeze.

I thought I would escape the curling effects of stockinette, I made it a good 5.5 inches wide.
Nope. Curled up like a little sow bug.

Well. Six years of knitting and nothing that could rightly be called a disaster. Everyone needs one sometime.

So. Tonight I am ripping, re-skeining, and casting on only 300 stitches this time. Oh my, I am laugh as I write this! I so remember just blithely casting on, refusing to count my stitches, because it seemed like too much work, and I just wanted a long circly scarf, and really, everything was going to be just fine. It’s a scarf, right? What could possibly go wrong?

Now I know.
Now you know.

Next time I will swatch.