16 Repeats

I know this is hard to believe, but I have just now, on row ten million of the shawl, recognized a fundamental truth: 

This thing is slowing down as I move toward the end of it.

You would think that such cosmic trusim might have occurred to me before this point in the process, but there you have it.  I can't believe it - I'm actually going slower and slower because each row has more stitches in it than the last one.

Which means that right up to the point where that little lightbulb of a notion asserted itself, I was actually thinking - wait for it - that I should be finishing this up any time now. 

It was only when I counted the number of repeats actually present in the shawl, and then compared them to the number required by the pattern, that I truly understood:  I have been knitting a lot of diamonds, but there are many more still to knit. 

Stupid numbers.  Rotten counting.  Why's it always gotta be the math harshing my mellow? 

Indignation Complete.  Must be Monday.

I Can Quit Any Time I Want

So, sure, my arms hurt.  And sure, the only cure for that is to rest them from the activity that caused the hurt.  I get it.  Time to take a break from knitting.  Much.  It's not like a have a problem or anything...

I was spinning, as you know.  Spinning and spinning, and making lots of nice Caora Dubh singles, chipping away at the pile of washed locks I promised myself I would get done before the end of May.  Here is some of that work, which you have to take my word as being recent, since this bobbin looks just exactly like all the others that came before it.  

And then I realized that my dear friend and college roommate Jill is having her 40th birthday party this Saturday.  This is the Jill who starved and shivered with me in New York City.  The Jill who held my hand on my wedding day.  The Jill who woke my babies up just so she could play with them before she had her own.  There is no way her birthday could go past me unacknowledged by knitwear.  So I fell off the wagon a little:

I'm a little bit smug about this one, because while Jill has a wool allergy (Poor Jill. That's like having a Banana Split allergy.  Why bother even getting out of bed?), I still wanted to knit her something, and the stash yielded one perfect skein of Comfy Sport , which is the perfect Jill Color (Honey Dew), and the perfect Jill softness, and the perfect Jill non-wool.  Clearly the Universe wants me to knit.  Get a load of that sheen, will ya?

And I was enjoying the lace so much that I realized I would really be letting down the Shawl-Along if I didn't spend a little time with Lindsay's beautiful triangle.  Which I am now finally beginning to get the hang of and wish to high heaven that I had put beads on, like Maria did.  See, even though I wasn't technically supposed to be knitting, it's okay because I switched gauges by changing to a different project, which we all know is a very healthy thing to do.  Heck, that was probably better for me than not knitting.

And then at Campbell's soccer game, it was so cold that I had to pull this out of my bag just to cover my face with it.  I may have accidentally knit on it as well - I was distracted by my shivering and it's possible that I forgot I wasn't supposed to be knitting.  

So while it is true that in the strictest sense, I didn't achieve my goal of not knitting this week, I think I still have everything under control.  I mean, it's not like I made an afghan, for pity's sake.  You don't see any Bohus around here, for crying out loud.  And although Phillip and the Smallies have been smirking a lot, they couldn't possibly understand:

Think how much knitting I'd have done if I hadn't been trying not to.

Yarn at Last

It's great to be home again, after my adventures on the road last week.  Over the weekend I taught at Village Yarn and Tea in Lake Forest Park, WA, where the knitters are sassy, and so are their Selbuvotter.  Big Fun.

Strangely, I seem to have fatigued my wrists and elbows.  Maybe I did something weird using my drop spindle while I was teaching?  Maybe I was in too big a hurry to finish the Rare Gems cardigan?  I did, by the way, finish it, in time to wear it to class, just as I had hoped.  Where it was (naturally) much too hot with a dozen people crammed into a tiny airless room to actually wear it.  

It's a bit of all right, though, no?  I like the elbow sleeves.  Which is good, since I ran out of yarn and had no chance of making them longer.

Anyway, since my knitting parts hurt, I realized that they are probably long overdue for a rest.  I think my last official day off from knitting was in June of 2008.  I view knitting restriction as a punishment, not a vacation, so it's not a decision I make lightly.

I made the mistake of mentioning to my family that I was going to try not to knit for a while.  They all looked like deer in the headlights.  Then Campbell snickered.  Lindsay giggled.  Then Phillip (on brief parole from the garage) openly guffawed.  I have the sense they don't think I can do it.

Just to show them that I don't have to knit, I spun.  I finally filled the 5th bobbin:

I pressed the 6-bobbin plying kate into service (the empty bobbin on the left is just there to even the tension band - I'm really making 5-ply here).  Note the copy of Miss Manners Guide to Raising Perfect Children holding the kate at a perfect 45-degree angle.  At last, that book has found its true calling.

The learning curve for plying 5 strands is exactly as steep as you might think.  Bits of it (like the part where one of the 5 plies breaks for no reason at all) totally sucked.  I stuck it out, though, desperate to finally see real yarn after an entire year of fleece processing and singles-spinning.  I wasn't going to let a little thing like complete lack of know-how get between me and finally seeing yarn.

And here are the first two skeins.  818 yards, so far.  There is still a lot of fleece to comb and spin.  I am reassuring myself that it's all washed, and safely hidden from my husband and an unintended jettison.  I put it in a place that I know to be safe from him: the cleaning closet.  Unless he falls prey to a sudden (and unprecedented) fit of polishing, I think the remainder of the locks are secure.

The finished yarn is much blacker than I expected.  The singles looked chocolate brown with silver streaks, but the yarn is black as can be.  I'm thrilled with it.  I'm also surprised at how much finished yarn the five bobbins yielded.  There are probably still another skein's worth of singles, but they need to be redistributed between bobbins.

So that was day one of my self-imposed knitting hiatus.  I planned to take five days off, but between the shawl, which keeps calling to me, and my family's heckling, I'm not sure if I'll make it.  Stay tuned.