The cities, the roads, the countryside, the people I meet - they all begin to blur. I tell myself I am searching for something. But more and more, it feels like I am wandering, waiting for something to happen to me, something that will change everything, something that my whole life has been leading up to. --Khaled Hosseini
And here we are: nearly February. I find myself constantly in the strange state of waiting for something to happen... no idea what that something is, just that I keep wondering when it will get here. Perhaps it's the dreary weather or perhaps it's my poor sleeping patterns. Either way, it sure would be nice to see it happen, whatever it is:
I keep alternating between nights of uninterrupted sleep and nights of waking up at 3 or 4am to ponder the world and rearrange stuff at work in my brain. It's very annoying and very tiring. This morning, I woke up at 4am and got up to knit a few rows of garter stitch in the dark. It is possibly the best upside to working on a knitting project with row upon row of garter stitch... it is some of the best company on a sleepless night.
I am getting close to the end of the main body of this project. It is still deciding what its final form will be. I'm quite sure it is going to be a sleeveless cardi with a shawl collar, as I have about 1.25 skeins of the main colour left and I am very carefully knitting the contrasting colour to make sure I can eke out the very last inch of it. I was pleased to be able to get through so much of it during the week as I mostly worked on the back after casting off half the stitches from the front. I should not be so surprised that working 150 stitches instead of 300 goes quite quickly, but it is still a pleasing consequence in which to find myself:
With all the short row colourwork, it has the rather unfortunate appearance of a sweater with dark pustules bulging out of it. Dr. Pimple Popper would probably love this thing. I probably should not say that aloud. Too late. Now you're thinking it:
But I am counting heavily on the blocking process to help bring my vision to light, however dim it is at the moment:
However tedious the garter stitch rows have been, they have the added benefit of being stress-free and easy to work. It frees my mind up to daydream about future projects for my stash. I have most recently been thinking about these skeins of Aran weight yarn, dyed by
Spirit Song Studio here on Vancouver Island:
I bought these a couple of years ago at the 100 Mile Fleece and Fibre Fair with absolutely no idea what I was going to do with them. Indeed, that is how most of my yarn purchases go. Perhaps one day I will be the kind of person who will buy yarn with a project in mind, but that has yet to actually happen. Most of my project ideas come about from me trying to make something useful of yet another impulse yarn purchase. What's that saying about stash busting necessity being the mother invention..?
My current idea is to make a couple of
Bobble Sheep Pillows from Purl Soho, but the yarn is the wrong weight and I'm not sure if I have enough and I'm not sure if I want to knit all of those bobbles and I'm contemplating re-writing it to be a crochet pattern instead...
So yeah, not so straightforward. It's a good thing I'm knitting all of that garter stitch at the moment. Apparently, I have a lot of math to do.
I'm off to rattle off a few more garter stitch rows before dinner. Here's to a positive and uplifting week, whatever it brings. Have a good week!
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