Yggdrasil.....what?

Call me crazy, but I'm starting something that is decadently wonderful.  It is a pattern created by Lisa Jacobs, Yggdrasil Afghan (Ravelry link).  It is a sumptious blend of knitting and cable stitches.  Yggdrasil is an immense tree that is central to Norse mythology.  I fell in love with the pictures and all the cables, so I decided it was next on my to do list in the "huge" category.  Do others have different levels of knitting?  I have my "take along" projects, usually socks, sometimes mittens.  These fill in the gaps of doctor's waiting rooms, school functions, and piano lessons.  Nothing too hard, fills the time (and my mind) quite pleasantly, but not challenging since they are stolen moments found here and there throughout the day.  Then I have my home projects, either they are too large to drag around during my day or they are complicated and involve counting higher than 10, ok, five.  Sometimes these are the same projects, sometimes not.  My Yggdrasil is not a complicated project at the moment, although it clearly will fall into the too large cateogry soon.

What you see here is the center medallion.  That is the actual tree, there are four sections, currently you are looking at the tree branches reach out into the sky.  I view them as winter branches, no leaves, and they are gnarly branches.  That is because they are 1X1 cables, going back and forth against the background.  Crazy, itty bitty cable turned me into a big crabby mess.  But I got through them and as I'm a ways farther than what you see in the picture, I'm in purl land heaven filled with endless stretches of purling amid 6 stitches of knit to form the tree trunk.  And I love it.

I bought the yarn at the Double Ewe.  I ended up using Cascade Eco Wool, the color is pretty accurate in the picture, it is a light gray color.  It is showing up the cable work nicely.  And the cost made it a good choice as well.  Since I needed 3,800 yards of yarn.  Holy smokes!  I did the math and with the generous yardage in Eco Wool, I would need 7.96 skeins.  Now in the past, I would have thrown caution to the wind and believed I could get the afghan done with 8 skeins, after all I'd have a cushion of .04 yards of yarn left over.  But I couldn't do it.  The fear of getting to the last 3 inches of the final cabled border and running out of yarn was too much for me to chance.  So I ordered the extra 9th skein.  No use stressing during the knitting of this afghan over whether or not I'd make it with 8 skeins of yarn. 

And last weekend I had to grow up and let go.  My Anna, went on a sleep over with a couple friends.  They went to the movies (without a parent along) and shopping (with a parent but not me).  She did great, as I knew she would, but oh it was hard for me to see her world growing larger and expanding.  She bought a couple really cute outfits, including this.

My baby is growing up.  She is bright and funny and kind.  And she is confident in herself and her friends.  And she is beautiful.  Now I'm going to excuse myself as I wander through memory lane and watch my mind's pictures of our years together, from a strong willed fiesty laughing baby to a mature teen ager...not sure I'm ready for it, but I'm confident she is.