I received the beautiful knitting basket I ordered from the KR Boutique. It is perfect, just perfect. Delicate, yet sturdy, the way a good basket is meant to be. All the little details, from the wheat-colored embroidered lining down to the matching zippered pouch that was concealed inside the zippered pocket of said lining, made me giddy. What to put in this delightful thing? Knitters don’t become faint in the presence of inspiration; we take action.
I was inspired forced to sort through some of my other baskets and their overflow, and I am shocked at what I found. Well, not so much shocked. I know me. So I spent an hour or so untangling little messes, muttering, discovering long-lost needles and patterns, and — here, I knew it was bad, but this bad? — making a pile of knitting. I can’t even call them WIP’s. It was a pile of knitting, plain and simple. I had to face it.
It included, in no particular order:
- Branching Out Scarf, 40% completed (and in danger of being abandoned because I’m just not feeling the love)
- The Fabulous Manos Wildflower Cabled Pullover, 25% completed (if it weren’t hot as blazes, I’d be working on it) (and it lives in my other favorite knitting basket, the Lantern Moon old-timey, new-fangled one that folds up)
- Washcloth, simple bias garter pattern, 50% completed
- Something circular in blue alpaca, frogged immediately
- Amazing Twining Lace Scarf, 25% completed (I am feeling the love, so it goes right into the new basket)
- Mistake Rib scarf in the yarn I bought in Italy, 50% completed (definitely a mistake, to be frogged)
- Go With the Flow Socks, 70% completed (and usually in the bag I take to work)
- Waving Lace Socks for my friend Virginia, 25% completed (I think that’s about as far as they’ll get, since she deserves so much better than the mess I was making of these socks)
- A fingerless mitt in Mt. Colors Bearfoot, 95% completed (I want to re-knit the tops because they’re too long) (and that means I need to find the second one)
- Another washcloth, an experiment in attaching a lace border, frogged
- Berry-colored socks in some weird pattern that I made up on an trip to visit my mother, who was ill, frogged to eradicate the bad memories
- An inch of something in Elann Baby Cashmere, also begun on a trip to visit my mom, but discarded when nothing went right, frogged
- At least three more socks in the early stages (we’re talking cuffs and maybe an inch more)(*sigh*)
- Braids Cardigan in Elann Highland Wool, 40% completed (and waiting patiently for my Manos obsession to subside)
What is going on here? As I said, I know me. I start things when I’m antsy. I’m looking for ways to soothe, or solve, or settle. I cast on, knit until the world calms down, and I’m fine. Or, I knit until I am frustrated and wild-headed; I wasn’t going to be fine in the first place. The result: a pile of knitting.
Either way, all these bits and tangled and sometimes beautiful things are Jane. One day I’ll tell you a sweet story about my mother and her “Janes” but it will have to wait until I have knitted or written my way out of this bloggy shyness.
Here is my recipe for a good kind of solitude: It’s a dark, foggy, humid, hot day, but my AC is on; I have the day off; I have exactly two errands to do; I rented a bunch of episodes of “Prime Suspect”; I have blueberries; I have endless knitting possibilities (see above).
Not Plain Jane 