Friends of Baa'd Influence

I am easily distracted. There are plenty of times when I will stop in the middle of a sentence to gaze at something that is completely unrelated to what I'm supposed to be doing at the time. Ask dkzack: she gets that from me all the time, poor thing. She's said to me more than once, "You have to pay attention to me a little bit longer, Adriene." I've also famously shouted the word, "Rabbit!" during a meeting on a snowy day in a room with many windows looking out to nature.

Yes. Distracted, thy name is Adriene.

This makes it especially difficult to be a monogamous knitter. It is a tremendous disciplinary feat for me to keep on one project at a time. I'm constantly catching myself gazing at a skein of yarn, lost in a daydream of what it might become. It doesn't help that I have skeins of yarn in my living room, more next to the dining table, a ball or two under my desk at work, and my main shelf of yarn is in plain view of the chair I eat my breakfast on in the kitchen. Every morning with a bowl of cereal in my hand... crunch, crunch, crunch, dream, dream, dream...

A couple of months ago, my friend Tara generously gave me a batt she made on her shiny new drum carder. It was full of all sorts of fun stuff... wool, locks of mohair, recycled sari silk, some sparkly stuff... it was lovely and fluffy and wonderful. I made up my mind that I'd leave it aside and make sure I gave it the time and energy it deserved.

I found myself standing next to my yarn shelf where I'd left the batt one evening. I was supposed to be cooking dinner. I don't remember how I got there or why I was standing there, but my eyes caught sight of the batt. Then, I glanced up and saw one of my Golding spindles sitting on the next shelf up. I looked over at the stove where I had pots and pans bubbling away. I looked back at the batt. Then the spindle again. Hmm.

I darted over to the stove, stirred, seasoned and flipped all things that needed stirring, seasoning and flipping, then hopped back to the batt and started spinning like my life depended on it. Man, that felt good. It is surprisingly easy to spin, and it looks like I'm going to be able to spin it in one whole piece.

Except, I kind of almost burned the entire dinner while doing that. Heh.

It's on hold again for now, because darn it, I need to focus and finish my current project. Monogamous knitter, that's me...

Except Tara just gave me this beautiful braid of hand dyed Blue Faced Leicester roving. Aaarrrghh... Tara! I've realized, though, that all my spindles have some sort of fibre on them. It looks like, despite being a faithful knit-project person, I'm not a monogamous spinner. This is working in my favour because I'd be spinning up a little of every little bit of fibre I could get my hands on.

And she's not the only distracter. dkzack gifted me a pattern called Escalope, which we both spied during a visit to one of our favourite yarn shops. Since she gave it to me, I've been daydreaming about abandoning my current project and knitting it up with this skein of Malabrigo Sock yarn in Eggplant. Aaaarrrrghh... dkzack!

You guys are killin' me here. Baa'd influence, that's them. But man... they're so kind to me. Baa'd, but good... I love you guys!