Who left the swift here?

Nobody was as surprised as I was by the latest big needle garter stitch phase. I have very little against big needles (as evidenced by the way that I didn't need to go buy some when the urge struck) and even less against garter stitch, which I consider very elegant. (I understand the complaints of some anti-garter types who find it boring and somewhat numbing, but I like the simplicity of it.)

Still, I was surprised. I'd sort of thought that the whiplash of knitting one thing for sixteen days would be a wicked case of startitis and an overwhelming need for variety. When recovery consisted of housekeeping and brain dead back and forth knitting...you could have knocked me over with a feather. Most unlike me. I worried actually, that perhaps I was coming down with something. That maybe this simple knitting phase was an early warning system for a cold, or the flu...or maybe an indication that I had finally gathered enough inner peace to knit that garter stitch jacket I've been thinking about. I shouldn't have worried. Now that I've got that out of my system, I seem to have contracted the predicted exceptional case of startitis.
Symptoms consist of the following:

Working on the tinks sweaters with a zeal I'd forgotten. I'm suddenly aware that they are growing quickly and that if I don't get the lead out I'm going to have spent all this time and energy knitting them hats with sleeves. Realistically speaking, this means that all I should be knitting is the tinks sweaters....and yet....

Ahem. A pair of socks seems to be almost finished, and worse than that....

Er, there is possibly (though I don't exactly remember how this happened) a lace scarf started out of the single ball of Misti Alpaca that I had leftover from the snowflake shawl. Does it end here? No my friends, it does not.

This would appear to be a mitten kit from Susanna, a gift from ages ago that has been stalking me from the stash. I've managed to resist it for a good long time, but there's my favourite kind of mitten talk in the blogosphere and this represents a desperate attempt to avoid getting sucked into the vortex of Latvian braids. (Maybe I'll put one little braid on the cuff....just to take the edge off.) It would appear that I wound this up very quickly sometime yesterday while I was on the phone. It's a blur.

I know that Rams is reading all of this (muttering darkly of commitment and faith and Tuesdays being for spinning while readying the stash-weasels to beset me) waiting for me to make some sort of gansey noise, so my fear of her wrath has a big lump of gansey Corridale making it's way through the wash today.

I can't spin that wet, so....

Sigh. Roving from Spunky Eclectic. I am helpless in the face of it.

I distract you now with yet another gift for an Olympian, (one that I neglected to give out the other day, what with being distracted by all of that garter stitch) this time from Rabbitch...

Beautiful peridot and silver stitch markers (Rabbitch acknowledges, and I concur, that it is very difficult to take pictures of sparkly things.) that spell "knit". Renee S. is the lucky winner. (Great. I went to Renee's blog and now I want to cast on those socks.)

Now, if you'll excuse me, it's occurred to me that Fiona's Book Launch is tomorrow...

(Have you seen this book? It's beautiful. Maybe I'll review it tomorrow.) ...and I should totally go cast on something cabled. You know, not because I can't control myself...just so I'm knitting something appropriate at the Launch. It's about Fiona, not me. I can stop whenever I want to. It's a choice. Where's my ball winder? Get out of my way.