Yes, that sound you hear is the sound of frogging.  I have never been afraid to cut my losses, so yesterday the Kerry Cardigan went to that great lily pad in the sky.  This, despite the fact that I had both sleeves done and was halfway up to the armholes!  However, I was hating every minute of working on it.  According to the pattern, the back and two fronts are knit together up to the armholes and then split.  With worsted weight wool, this was making a heavy weight on my needles that was hurting my hands and making me frustrated.  I could have just frogged that and knit them in pieces, but I just could not face doing that honeycomb pattern again and it was curling badly anyway.  In her recent posts, the Yarn Harlot showcased Gwendolyn.   I really liked the pattern, especially the sleeve detail, so it is currently on my needles:

I do feel a bit sorry for this yarn.  I think this is about the 3rd attempt to make it into a sweater!  Usually after frogging I will just start knitting with the frogged yarn, but this has been through the wringer, so I decided to skein, wash and rewind (I did have two unused skeins that I started with).

These are the three skeins I have done and awaiting the washtub.  I am not regretting my decision and am enjoying this knit SO much more.

Speaking of cutting losses, I have decided to close down my Etsy shop.  After a brief flurry of activity at the beginning, I have had very little traffic in the shop, despite advertising on Ravelry.  I had hoped that maybe local bazaars might be the venue for my projects, but that doesn't seem to be either.  Yesterday I spent 8 hours sitting at a table and sold zero, nada, zip!  People weren't even stopping to look!!  I have one more bazaar in November that I've already paid for and I'll do that one, but after that I'll go back to sewing for fun.

It's really hard to break out of the mindset (especially after 24 years of working) that your work is only valued if you are paid for it.  Although I didn't really have any trouble adjusting to retirement itself, I think I still had it in my mind that I needed to do something for which I would be paid.  Hubby has found a nice little cottage industry making airplanes out of recycled aluminum cans and he sells them all over the world!  But he has convinced me that I don't have to do that.  We certainly don't need the money and I should just do what I want to do, not what I think other people might buy.  As is so often true, he is right.

So I am not going to sew anything else for the bazaar coming up, but will concentrate on having fun and maybe making up some Christmas gifts.  

So – that's about it from here.  The family is coming this afternoon and Abby and I are taking the girls to the library.  In one of the eccentricities of Washington infrastructure, we share the same library system, even though they are several counties away.  That means they can check out books here and return them there.  Recently our local library has started stocking books in the Kindle format.  I'm very excited about that because I LOVE my Kindle and am loving that I can enjoy books for free.  Not all titles are available and there are a distressing number of bodice-ripper romances available, but once you sort through the trash, there are a lot of good ones too.  I'm just starting on a new series of mysteries by Anne Perry set in the World War I era.

I leave you with this scene from our peaceful little neighborhood.  This little creature hung around almost all day and wasn't even frightened by our coming and going up the driveway: