Out With The Old.. And In With The New

So!

Last year my goal was to learn to knit socks. We'll consider that accomplished, shall we?

This year I am determined to knit a sweater. I've never knit one before.

Yes, I'm serious, and no, I'm not joking.

There are a few things about sweaters that scare me.

First, it's a commitment that requires stamina. My knees are quaking at the word commitment, and stamina? HA.HA.HA. Second, I cant' wing it. I am going to have to swatch. Sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I'm going to have to swatch.

How on earth could swatching possibly scare me? Well, for a variety of reasons. Here they are, in no certain order:

What if I decide I don't like knitting with the yarn?

What if I pick out a yarn that is really the wrong yarn for the project?

What if I can't get the right gauge?

What if I can't get the right gauge?

What if I can't get the right gauge?

What if I can't get the right gauge?

Do I use bigger needles?

Do I use smaller needles?

You see my problem? Maybe I have just gotten lucky with socks and am halfway decent at eyeballing it - who knows. What I do know is that mentally it seems easier to rip out a sock than it is to rip out weeks worth of work on a sweater. Then again, maybe I am just lazy and would rather skip a swatch and dive right in than take the time to check my gauge. (Realistically speaking, I'll loose what, an hour, maybe two of my life here? Get over it, for Pete's sake!)

To over come my fears, and because they are just down right supportive people, Opal and Lisa are wanting to knit the same sweater. I think we are going to knit the sweater together, in our own crazy little Knit Along. And we are all going to knit the February Lady Sweater.

Now I have to pick a color. I like purple. I have a lot of purple in my wardrobe. If I had my way, I'd be using DIC Classy - Visual Purple. Or maybe something from Creatively Dyed - Jackie is nice, isn't it? Both are beautiful and both are calling my name. In a perfect world, I would have a credit card that automatically pays itself off monthly and has no limit!

As beautiful and noteworthy as these yarns are, I'm going to go with the practical side of my brain (err, well, let's say the previously unknown practical micron sized portion of my brain) and opt for using Cascade 200, simply because of the massive amount of color choices and the fact that it's rather inexpensive. I'm obviously in love with the following choices:

Aporto

Light Teal - which doesn't seem very light to me, but whatever, I'm cool with that

Midnight Heather

Italian Plum

If you know me well, you know that purple is my favorite color. It was hard to pick just one (insert whimper here) and so finally I decided that Italian Plum really did it for me. Just to be sure I did look at other websites to see the variance of color between photographs and TLE's seemed to be right in the middle. Perfect. Yes, all of that went into picking a shade of purple. God help me.

I need to buy the yarn, peeps.

Please.help.me.pick.a.color.

PLEASE!!!