Big Color

I owe my Juliana a debt of design on this sweater because she almost punched me in the face when I told her I needed to buy some yarn to make something for myself. Exercising some restraint however she walked over to the six drawer chest in the living room, yanked open a drawer, held her hand in display position and said MOM.  You. Have. YARN.  (Only 3 drawers full though.)
And I did.  And still do.  Less than I did have though, thanks to some giant size 17 circular needles, knitting with 3 yarns at once and..... knitting guts.  I shied away from knitting for so many years because I felt as though I could not make it up as I went along.  That and lots of other now seemingly invalid reasons.  I have followed and completed over a dozen patterns over the past year with mostly good success.  I am only now starting to see where I would like to amend something here or there, or maybe do something differently than how the pattern is written if I were to do it again.  In other words, my designer brain is starting to walk hand in hand with my following the instructions and learning something brain.  I am developing a point of view as I barely scratch the surface of learning technique and variations on basic things about knitting. 
But this sweater.  Well this thing.  I had some reckless fun.  This sweater is my version of getting knocked up by knitting.  It is the product of just going for it.  And just like that dumb kid in your freshman studio painting class who thinks he can be an abstract painter simply because nothing recognizable is actually portrayed so how hard can it be, I just knit this thing very awkwardly and loud.  Like I feel like you could have (like) seen me (like) knitting it from (like) wherever you are because my motions of making it were large and happy and dumb.  And I was so excited the whole time and couldn't stop showing it to people mostly the same group of them that live and work here in a steady rotation once I thought maybe they were ready to hear about it again.
And it's huge.  So huge.  I wanted it big, but here was how the cast on went which was piled up with my decision making process on how many stitches to cast on which we will call, for the sake of this description, designing the sweater.  Yes.  That's what it was.  I was designing a sweater.  Aherm.  SO when I was designing the sweater I was like oooo colors, oooo, threeeeee colors at once, what does that look like?, ooooo what do THESE 3 look like together, oooo let me cast these on together, oooh look! (shows Juliana (who is rolling her eyes)), this is gorgeous, oooo when one color runs out I will just tie on another, yes!!, oooo, cast on 12, oooo but I will keep gray and white and black some what constant, cast on another 30, oh I think I made a hat once that was about 50 stitches, oooo but the colors will be like all landscapey- and HOT  there has to be some HOT colors, my torso is definitely bigger than my head so maybe 100 stitches, MAGENTA!  (gasp) Ooooh I have this magenta color scrap, that will have to happen right before black oooo dang every yarn I have is going in this thing oooo crap am I stealing all of my granny square scrap colors now?, oh well, oooo I think 120 stitches will do it.  Now I have a tube. A huge tube.  Like the whole family can get in here tube. But it is too pretty to undo. I started at the bottom.  Oh. Crap.  I meant to start at the top.  Dang.  (Looks up raglan sleeve construction bottomsup style on the interwebuals)  Makes sleeves.  Attaches sleeves, makes up things about attaching sleeves that I am sure I've seen somewhere but didn't bother to confirm because I was 60 seconds away from the baby squawking something about needing breast milk.
Then I had a sweater.  I think it is beautiful.  I am proud of myself.  And I like it so much that I am going to take it apart and do it over only this time with like 90 stitches.  It will be worth it.  I learned stuff and I want to use the that stuff I learned right here on this sweater.  Not the next one.
I am sorry, Knitting.  I know that you did not see me coming.  But you should have thought of that before you sent me the invitation.
True story.
xoAM
Raise your hand if you'd buy my knitting book........cricket.