I'm knitting! I'm knitting!

At the behest of my roommate, I'm updating! She says it's because she doesn't want me to lose interest. It is my hope that the real reason she wants me to update is that this blog is drawing her closer and closer, ever more inexorably, to the yarn and needles teasing her from nearly every corner of the apartment. Or, perhaps, (and this is far more likely) she thinks that having me update more frequently will induce me to knit more frequently, and thus make the amount of yarn in the apartment recede. That's probably it.

After a hiatus of several days, I am knitting on White Fir again. I had made a mistake on two of the six sides, and it was causing me to not knit and become depressed because I wasn't knitting. It is a strange phenomenon, that after so short time I was affected so deeply. I was lethargic, sleeping late, uninterested in anything besides blinking... This might also have something to do with the sore throat I had. This sore throat, for the record, was clearly the fifth horseman of the Apocalypse, and we should all make preparations accordingly.

Now that I'm knitting again, I'm reading, writing in my paper journal, and am a much more pleasant person to be around, according to my BF. I solved the mistake in Inner Border 2 by simply ignoring it on the plain round and k3tog in the appropriate spot on the patterned round. There are still two extra yarnovers in there, but that's all right with me, and it's going to be my shawl. Striving for perfection is one thing, but being a whimsical creature and finding nothing wrong with having a few little errors that give the thing character is another.

There is White Fir, in all her smushed together glory. I am actually much farther along than this picture suggests, which means that she is even more smushed together on the needles. The pattern calls for a 24" circular, and while that doesn't seem so bad at first, I would have switched to a 32" when I started the second Inner Border pattern. However, I can't seem to find Susan Bates Quicksilvers in size 7 anywhere on the web, and it isn't strictly necessary. I think it would make the knitting a little more pleasant, but this way I'll be even more surprised when I'm finished and stretch it all out.

I'm very happy to be knitting again, and especially on something so beautiful and complex. Even though the charts look daunting, I'm memorizing each pattern repeat and knitting from memory on most rounds, only rarely looking back at the charts. This is the first time I've ever done that, and it makes me feel so capable. Connected, as well, to all the people who have done it and continue to do so today.