Sudoku

Originally published  Thursday, October 9, 2008

So, it’s been a while since my last blog entry. I’ve been meaning to post something, but every time I sit down at my computer to begin composing a new entry, I find myself getting sucked into the vortex of the black hole that is—Sudoku. Yes, the evil logic puzzle with numbers but no math has me in its grasp. I am totally addicted.

Oh, I’ll do just one puzzle before I start writing my blog entry, say I. Ha! The next thing I know, I look at the clock and twenty, thirty, maybe forty minutes have passed, just like that. In the blink of an eye. And to make matters worse, I cannot resist doing a second puzzle, and maybe even a third. Before I know it, the entire afternoon is gone and it’s time to start supper.

This Sudoku obsession is competing with my mindless knitting and, quite frankly, Sudoku is kicking mindless knitting’s  sorry ass. Since I cannot knit and do Sudoku at the same time, my mindless knitting is languishing in the drawer of my computer desk, a lonely Blueberry Waffle sock that has been awaiting its toe decreases and its mate for a couple of weeks now. I feel guilty for neglecting this sock, but not guilty enough to resist Sudoku’s seductive siren call.

The rest of my knitting, my “watching television” knitting, is in somewhat better shape. Lots of college football games, the new seasons of House, Bones, ER, and new series such as The Mentalist, not to mention Countdown and Rachel Maddow—can you say TiVO, boys and girls?—have provided me lots of high quality time with the RCA and my knitting.

I’ve done some work on my long-neglected Dale of Norway Gjende, but it has been on hold because I once again had to order more yarn. This time it was the dark navy yarn that was running short, and I knew I would be getting a different dye lot. I thought the colors looked pretty close yesterday when the yarn arrived, but it was a cloudy day. The real test is to compare the two colors in bright sunlight and today is sunny, the two dye lots are nearly identical, and all is well in the world. Well, except for that pesky little economic meltdown, but that’s a topic for another day.

I don’t think the very slight difference in the color of the old and new yarn will be noticeable. But if it is, I’ll try the alternating trick, i.e., I’ll knit a round with the old yarn, then a round with the new yarn, and keep alternating the two yarns until I run out of the old yarn. The point where the sleeve will join the body of the sweater has lots of white patterning, so the slight difference in the color shouldn’t be obvious there. Keep your fingers crossed. ☺

I also started a new sweater for the boy, in a rather bright shade of green Wool of the Andes that he picked out himself. Originally I was going to make an Aran sweater using a pattern I bought from Knit Picks. But after starting the sweater, knitting 2½ inches of ribbing and several repeats of the cable pattern, I decided that I didn’t like anything about it. The cables were fussy, with some of them requiring crossing every other round, but they didn’t look spectacular. If I am going to go to all the effort of crossing cables every other round, I expect them to really shine. This pattern just wasn’t fun to knit, and it didn’t look good enough to make it worth my while to knit a pattern I wasn’t enjoying all that much. All in all, the pattern was a huge disappointment.

So, on to plan B, a Gansey. I love doing Gansey patterns and the one I’m using is so much fun I can hardly put the sweater down. But—What’s that sound? Do I hear Sudoku calling me? Gotta run! TTFN.

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