Do I need this stress....isn't the weather enough stress!!

One more day and then it is the month of March....please let the weather get warmer...hopefully spring is not far away. It has been so cold, we had a warm day last week...or was it the week before?...I am hanging onto my sanity by a thread!! O.K....the warm day...the wind arrived...not a breeze...nope could not have a nice breeze...hurricane force winds!! First we heard something whopping on the north side of the house.......soffiting is loose on the peak of the roof....then the noise on the roof and there go the shingles...into the siding on the back of the garage...damaging the siding...well we better phone and leave a message with the insurance agent so we will be first in line to have the appraiser out. He came out and now we have to wait until warmer weather so we get the repairs done. We went to town the next day and there were trucks and trailers in the ditches all along the highway.

   I had purchased this sweater kit from Knitpicks before Christmas and decided to get it out and knit on it taking a break from the colorwork hats. I do not know if it is just me but I have a terrible time with their patterns. The sweater, they call the Gallatin Coat has a cute shawl type collar which I loved when I seen it, the sweater is knit all in one, no side seams which is O.K. but with the heavy yarn it is really heavy to manage while you are knitting. They had a chart with a deer to knit around the body and as I wanted to use some of my Alpaca yarn to knit another sweater later I thought I would chart out a llama and knit it into this sweater. so charted out the llama and knit a swatch and could see where a couple stitches should be changed. . O.K this is great and away I went with my knitting............the first llama faces the front.....then the second llama is reversed to face center back........and then the next llama is knit facing the llama on the back...and then the next llama in the pattern is turned around again to face the front.........now is it my brain or what...this is bloody hard to keep track of!!!!!! Now if the fronts and back were knit separately this would not be that bad but when you have 146 stitches on your needle in thick heavy yarn.... and you are trying to manage four separate small balls of yarn for each pattern along each row......now I do not give up very often but after knitting and ripping back I have finally decided my life is too short and my back is aching....so have decided I love owls and they have a chart for an owl that is not directional so that is what is going on the sweater!! And I knit the first two rows without a problem. I am not giving up on the llamas and am plotting out how I will knit them into a sweater as I work on knitting the owls into this one. One solution would be to knit the sweater body in three pieces or another thought just came to me...maybe the solution would be to put llamas on the front and another non-directional pattern on the back. I also had a problem with the chart for the band across the bottom and I finally added one more row to the chart and charted out my own pattern. now I read ahead to the directions on how they knit the sleeves......the sleeves are knit in the round....and then are attached and knit up with the front and back yokes.......we will see when I get to that point. I normally do not have a problem following a pattern...so is it the pattern.....or is it the senior moment of my life...I am blaming it on the winter weather we have had this year....that is my story and I am sticking to it!!