Aftermath

This morning I sat quietly in the living room with my cup of coffee (my second, if you must know) I looked around at the damage done to my house by this latest round of startitis, and tried to figure out how to put it all back together. Startitis is an insidious disease, because it doesn’t just wreak havoc on your mind and time, but on your surroundings as well.  Out of nowhere came a storm last week, a wave that I saw coming.  The same way that a wave comes at you in the ocean, that’s how this one came, and just like in the ocean, trying to stand there in defiance of it failed miserably.  It was just bigger and stronger than I was, and it knocked me down, dragged me along the bottom of the sea, holding me under with the sound it makes – a scream that sounds like KNIT IT ALL.  I resisted, and that only made things worse.  It would have been over sooner if I’d given up and body surfed that thing into shore. If I’d have given up and just knit, it might not have gotten ugly.  I might have avoided the secondary infection I contracted that said YOU DON’T HAVE ENOUGH YARN MAKE SOME NOW.  I ended up with six new things cast on, and one lot of spinning on the wheel – but that’s not the mess of it.  The mess is the yarn pulled out of storage, examined, swatched and abandoned, along with whatever innocent bystanders I knocked to the floor in my haste. 

The stash room looks like someone sent a troupe of berserk monkeys with wool issues into it – and don’t get me started on what might, or might not have happened to the stash cupboard in my office when some lunatic decided to get out the carder, unpacked it and then abandoned the whole enterprise to root through the sock yarn bags like a boar after truffles.

There is a fleece in the kitchen that I dragged up here to start washing, sometime after midnight on Friday.  (Luckily, I succumbed to fatigue before I got started on that. I was able to see the folly of it after a good night’s sleep.)  I can’t even begin to tell you about the knitting books spilling over the living room floor, and on the dining room table… oh, and I’m stepping over a little mountain of them I piled by my desk. 

There are post-it’s with cryptic knitting plans written on them – one says "g5/1 co92, not stretch anti bobble."  I think that means that the gauge should be 5 stitches to the inch, you would cast on 92, and that I shouldn’t … Hell.  I don’t know.  I just hope that "not stretch anti bobble" doesn’t turn out to be a really important instruction that is totally obvious in two weeks.

Today is for sorting all this out, putting it all back where it should be, and trying to figure out how I might prioritize all of these new projects.  Out of the cowl, mittens, two pairs of socks, vest and baby blanket, what next?  Luckily, today is Tuesday, and with the new year came a renewed commitment to Tuesdays Are For Spinning, so instead of kicking a path through the wool to the wheel, I think I’ll tidy my way there. 

(PS On the wheel is BMFA Merino/Yak/Silk in Oaks Bottom. I’d link, but I think both the fibre and the colourway are out of rotation.)

(PPS.  I think I’ll work on the baby blanket after that, so don’t bother nagging.)