Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Strikes and Gutters

When I went to South Dakota (already a month ago!), I brought extra knitting with me because, you know, just in case I had some down time.  Hey, we all have our fantasies, right?  Needless to say, I did not have any time for recreational knitting on that trip until the drive home.  

Leaving Aberdeen, I stopped at the blogless Janine's house near Madison, WI.  With her encouragement, I frogged a sweater that was almost 3/4 finished.  It was one of those things.  I started knitting it knowing that the yarn choice for the pattern was not great.  The whole time I was knitting it, I was saying to myself, this isn't quite what I want.  Each row was confirming what I already knew.  And yet, I kept on knitting.  Such an experience is not limited to knitting, in case you are thinking that it sounds kind of familiar: just keep moving forward and all the fundamental wrongs of this relationship will miraculously become right.  

Yeah, so that didn't really work out.

Fortunately, it was just yarn and knitting so ripping it out was not too horribly painful.  I already have picked out a new pattern for the yarn so I feel a renewed excitement about the whole undertaking.  It's all about "moving on" and "letting go of any lingering bitterness" and "not attaching to feelings of anger or self-recrimination" and "releasing any resentment" about "how things are."

That sort of thing.

I will start the new, more wonderful, sweater tomorrow.  Hope springs eternal.

Meanwhile, I have a new pair of socks on the go as my subway knitting.  They are somewhat green.


And I finished plying my first yarn on my rental wheel.


It's so pretty!  But I am not too attached to that either because "moving on" works two ways.  Actually I am lying.  I can't take my eyes off of it and laying my cheek against it and walking around the house showing it to the cats and saying, "look how pretty this is!"

Fortunately the cats refuse to feed my obsession and ignore my displays.  Maybe I should go wake up the kids...?


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