Quick, knit something!

So, I've been pretty much corralled in my house for the past five days and I'm becoming quick and full with cabin fever. The fact that I've knitted and ripped down a scarf for my mother about, oh, four friggin' times, doesn't help that much.

I made a really cool cabled hat for my mom for Christmas. Don't believe me? Here's some pictoral evidence!

So, I intended to knit her a really cool cabled scarf to match for her birthday, which is tomorrow (Happy Birthday Mom!). Needless to say she won't be getting it. You see, I had planned to finish it this week, but mean-ass, fence-jumping dog had other plans for me. So, since she won't be getting her scarf by her birthday, and I wasn't really happy with the scarf all that much to begin with (which is probably why I waited until the last minute to work on it) I'm going to start over and make this scarf perfection. Or so I thought.

I decided to try another cable pattern. Well, the problem isn't with the patterns, really, it's my mom. And it's the yarn, too, but mostly my mom. She doesn't like wool (gasp!). So, the hat is the same yarn as the would-be scarf, and it's Caron Simply Soft Tweed, which has no natural fiber content. That means that you can't block it, so whatever pattern you use you have to be OK with the fact that it won't lie flat no matter how good your intentions.

Cables need to be blocked, that is, unless you knit them in the round for a hat and they don't need to lie flat (I think that rhymes!). Scarves, are by nature, flat and long. So, with this yarn, no cables. Back to square one.

So I tried another pattern, which was kind of lacey. Lace, too, come to find out, needs to be blocked. So no matter how many swatches I knit, it wasn't going to work. Period.

So, I've given up lace and cables for this scarf and all the little shitty swatches I made in favor of a drop-stitch pattern from my own friggin' pattern book library. That's right. I wasted tons of time looking for a pattern that would work with this god-awful yarn when I had one right under my friggin' nose. That, my dear, is frustrating!

So, I'm going to get to work on this ridiculously easy scarf and hopefully I'll be done in time to give it as a belated gift.

In related news, I've grown a bit batty.