Knitter's remorse

Ok, first of all, I am really, really enjoying working on my Central Park Hoodie. Before this, I'd mostly been knitting socks and mittens in tiny, tiny yarn, and it's really fun to knit something in giant, worsted weight wool. It knits up so quickly! I'm making lots of progress and I have high hopes for it being a nice first sweater.

But here's the thing. I am incapable of leaving well enough alone. I am somewhat dissatisfied with my sweater. I am already planning how I will do my next Central Park Hoodie, even though I am not yet a quarter of the way finished the with first one. First of all, while I am utterly enjoying knitting it in Cascade 220, I think I may do the next one in Cotton-ease. (Go ahead and scoff, yarn snobs. I may be cheap, but at least I'm solvent.) Second of all, I think I will knit it in one piece and try the groovy Elizabeth Zimmermann fake seam trick that I just read about in Knitting Without Tears. Third, I will fiddle with the cables. I haven't figured out how exactly I plan to fiddle with the cables, but I think I may do something wild and wacky with the mirror image cables on the back. If I made it into one big cable, instead of two adjacent little ones, I think I could do one of the really complex cables that I fell in love with when I checked one of Barbara Walker's Treasuries out of the library a while back. (Check out that link, folks. That blog is made of awesome. They actually knit the spider! And take a look at the Saxon Braid, because I think that's what I want on the back of my Central Park Hoodie.) Then I'll find something simpler but matching to do for all the other cables on the sweater. I want to do it in a lighter color, so you can see the cables better. Finally, I want to knit the whole thing on circular needles, rather than straights. I have to scrunch up my knitting to fit it all on the straight needle, and it prevents me from admiring my progress.

All of this sounds like fun, but I don't know why I can't just enjoy the knitting that I'm doing without fixating on how I could do it better. And am I really going to want to knit two Central Park Hoodies in a row?

Have I mentioned that the Chicago Public Library has a truly amazing selection of knitting books, by the way? No, of course I haven't, because I've only posted like three times. Well, the Chicago Public Library has a great selection of knitting books. They're mostly new and trendy, which is a little disappointing, because the historian in me enjoys looking at vintage knitting books. But they have pretty much every recent knitting book that I could want to look at, including the elusive Alice Starmore Fair Isle book. I can't decide if I want to check that one out or if I'll just fall in love with it and then be sad that I'll never be able to justify spending $200 on a knitting book.