Despite all my excitement about knitting a yoke sweater, and despite the fact that I’ve had the yarn for nearly a week now, I’m only just about to cast on. Because what have I been doing? Swatching! (No, not for the entire week.)
First, I decided to wind the yarn. Not in my usual ball-winding way, but as a center pull ball wound on a nostepinne. Admittedly, this wasn’t for any particular reason, save that I’ve never done it before. My eagerness to try this was only slightly hampered by the lack of an actual nostepinne in my life. After a thorough search for suitable stand-ins, I found a paintbrush. Problem solved.

Once I had some of it wound, I began the swatching. The whole concept of “proper swatching” is, I have to say, quite new to me. I’ve swatched in the past — swatched quite a bit, in fact, but the entire 4 inches or more has always seemed a bit extreme. And I’ve never washed swatches before, either (I know, I know. I’m terrible). But this time, I decided, I was going to do it right.
I’ll admit that I was partially inspired to do this by Ysolda’s post on swatching, where she explains an easy way to swatch stockinette in the round. So I did it. I tried three different needle sizes, just to be sure on which I liked the best. I’m glad I did, because I initially thought I’d be using size 8s, but in the end, I think I’ve settled on size 7s.
So it should begin soon. I’m definitely planning on and looking forward to casting on tomorrow night, so we’ll see how far it gets this weekend!
By the way, I also made some cookies the other night!

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip. They’re really good, but the only thing is that they got stale really, really quickly. They were in plastic and everything, but by the second day, they’d become very hard. It’s a mystery, but I guess it’s not that bad of one — they’re just a bit crunchier now.
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