June 28, 2010

Public Service Announcement

In the interest of fairness, I feel that it is only responsible that I tell you that I am going to be knitting the edge of the Summer in Kansas Shawl forever. 

I know some of you have become accustomed to a parade of varied knits trouping past - but after knitting on this shawl edge all weekend I have to tell you that those days are over, because with all the time I've poured into this bad boy over the last few days, it should be more than done.  More. Than. Done.

I've knit lots of things in my time, I know how long knitting takes, I have no delusions at all about it being a slow process, but this one isn't right. There's some sort of charm on it where no matter how much I knit, more remains - and here's the really creepy part - It looks like I'm making progress, but I'm not.

You know the black hole of knitting? Every project has one, where you knit and knit but seemingly, nothing happens? You measure it and you've got 20cm, so then you knit for two hours and measure and miraculously you still have 20cm?  Or that thing where you knit for ages and then go to sleep and then in the morning you would be willing to swear on a stack of cashmere that a team of co-ordinated chipmunks on a complex mission came in and ravelled your work in the dead of the night?  ( The chipmunks are of course controlled by an evil overlord. Chipmunks have brains the size of lentils and don't do a lot of higher reasoning or function well in a team.) That happens to me all the time, and you just keep pouring the stitches in and eventually you hit escape velocity and get free of the gravity of the thing.  This isn't that. With this shawl, I can see that I'm making progress. I can see that I've got 14 more little leaves around the edge, but somehow, even though I'm obviously creating more knitting, there is still always more to be accomplished.  I don't want to guess at what game is afoot, but I think it's some sick sisyphean payback for shoving it in a cubby for 4 years, which I did do, and can't deny.

I'm going to keep knitting until it's done, because that's what I said I would do - but I just wanted to let you know that this decision combined with the apparently supernatural nature of this thing means that this shawl is all you'll be seeing on the blog forever.  It's pretty and all, so that's cool, but I thought you would want to know.

Posted by Stephanie at June 28, 2010 8:24 AM