It's not spring, but I think I hear the peepers calling

Yesterday on the bus I finished the body of the Basalt tank, with a great sigh of relief. Knitting all those hexagons and the construction kept it interesting, but I was getting awfully tired of hauling the thing in and out of my bag every time I wanted to work on it (big, sprawling thing that it was) (this should have been a clue methinks). And my fellow commuters are probably glad that I will no longer be taking up more then my fair share of the available seats on the bus with yarn and needles.

I decided to actually try the thing on last night before I sat down to pick up the umpteen million stitches I needed to do the straps and edging on the bottom. A very good decision, since it is way too big.

Damn. I had actually thought that I'd picked right this time - I checked my gauge ahead of time, and chose the size 39 which should fit with slight negative ease, given my lactation enhanced boobage. However, it is easy 3-4 inches too big around. ARGH! I don't believe that I've actually lost that much baby weight in the two months or so it took to get to this point, so something else is off. I'll have to go back and check my gauge in the actual sweater and see how that compares to my swatch. But hell. This hardly ever happens to me, not because I'm such a careful swatcher (hah!), but because I usually can work around any issues and muddle through. But the construction of this tank is such that the only way to fix it is to rip out the whole thing. All 5+ hexagons. And I will definitely add in Kelp's waist shaping trick in the Basalt Reincarnation (TM). And maybe leave off the half hexagon on the back. The only good thing is that I wasn't going to be able to wear it until the spring anyway, so I can put it away to be frogged in a few months with out guilt.

And...now I can start on something else for myself, conveniently ignoring all the C!#$%)^ knitting lurking in the background. This is calling my name, and seems to be a really quick knit. And since we're going up north for the holidays, I'll need something warm, right?

Edited to add: my disappointment about the new froggy nature of the Basalt tank was, however, mitigated by the Red Sox. Or rather, by the absolute implosion of the Rockies' pitching staff. I was folding laundry and kept looking up at the TV, thinking "Did he really just walk in another run? No, he couldn't have...ohmigod he did!" Thank you Josh, thank you entire BoSox batting order, and thank you Mr. Hurdle for keeping Franklin Morales and Ryan Speier in there pitching as long as you did. I guess maybe the 8 days off wasn't very helpful. On to Game 2!