what was I thinking?

Hmmm... sometimes I wonder where my brain is. I cast on tonight to make the Child's Placket Sweater from Last Minute Knitted Gifts for my godson, who will be turning two this month. I'm using Knit Picks Crayon, which I'm really, really excited about in the flesh (way more excited than I was about its looks online). It knits up soft and dreamy. So I pull out my needles, start knitting away, get about halfway up the body when I realize it looks awfully large for a size 2-4. And I start to think "Gee, jennie, it might have been smart to knit a gauge swatch before you launched into the body." So I measure gauge and I'm way off... I'm way off because i'm an über-idiot. In addition to forgoing a gauge swatch, I also was knitting on needles of the wrong size (although the pattern calls for US 7, the yarn knits to gauge on US 5-6). A final sign of my idiocy? When doing some math to see if I could get away with not buying a new set of needles (remember, i'm on a knitting-related-purchasing diet) I realized that even if I had the correct size needles, I still didn't order enough yarn. The pattern calls for 5 skeins of yarn with a yardage of 130 per skein. I ordered 4 skeins of yarn that comes 110 yards/skein. Hello? Brain? Are you in there? So now, I guess, I have to order more yarn. Or I could wait, knit it out with an adjusted pattern to avoid buying new needles, and see if I need a new skein or not... what do you think? I actually don't mind knitting on needles a little large. It makes the fabric really loose and soft, and my godson lives in florida (although he takes trips to NJ and NY to visit family sometimes), so a looser weight sweater will be better. Hmmm...

I have way too many projects OTN right now... Trying to finish things up. I'm so burned out on jaywalkers right now that I'm thinking about ripping out my STR start and using that yarn for a different pattern. I'm in the process (for two weeks now) of turning the heel on the first of the Batman jaywalkers. But, in the past two days, I've worked my way up the back of Orangina and I'm loving it. I'm knitting it in an obscene shade of turquoise (knitpicks shine - which rocks, by the way) which I blame on my current obsession with the 1950's obsession with the southwest (my favorite color combo in my head right now? turquoise and red. I picture wearing my turquoise orangina with an oatmeal below-the-knee skirt and a large, chunky red wood bead necklace - the skirt's in the works... the necklace is in my mind). It seems strange to be knitting for summer when it's still in the 30s here. But the heat of Memphis inspired me, and I'm keeping my eye on warmer weather.

To close -- I try not to post gratuitous pictures of my kitties on here, but today I came into my study, and both Hank and Phoebe were crammed into the box that Hank usually claimes as his own. It was so cute, I had to snap a picture.