1.  I am seriously excited about knitting things that are not a baby blanket. 

2. Not that knitting the baby blanket wasn’t fun,  it was super fun.  It just wore on a little towards the end.  I blame the edging. The first few peaks were fun, but there’s 80 on that blanket. Towards the end it took a certain fortitude of spirit that I usually reserve for cleaning out closets.

3. Just about the minute I finished that blanket, I looked around for something to knit that was totally and completely different and not at all like a baby blanket.

4. That was easy.

Thrummed mittens.  Mine are a kit from Liberty Fibers, bought at the Squam Art Fair last year.  I’m a little helpless in the face of thrummed things. Natalie was here this morning and we were looking at the mitten and she was asking me why I was knitting thrummed mittens in March (when winter is almost over) who they were for…. and I had no answers for her.  None.  I have no intentions for these at all.  I’m just knitting these because they’re fun, fast – and because they’re not a white baby blanket.

I also knit them because even though I’ve been knitting thrummed stuff forever, turning them inside out to reveal their Muppetesque innards always cracks me up.

5.  I’m also knitting socks, but you probably guessed that.  Ken’s birthday was a few days ago, and he always gets Birthday Socks.  This year I was a little bogged down with the Great White, and so he didn’t get them.  As compensation, he got to pick any yarn from the stash, and any pattern he could find. 

6.  The yarn part was pretty easy for him. He picked Dream in Color Everlasting in Congo.  I love that sock yarn.  I think it’s fabulous. Strong, bouncy – super cushy. 

7. Ken choose Francie as his pattern, which I’ve knit for him before, but I made them out of Alpaca Sox, and as beautiful as they were, they got felted. (I got them back. My feet are smaller than his.) He said he misses them.

8.  Yesterday was Tuesday, and I spun.  I’m still trying to finish the cream  BFL (there’s a lot of it) and I admit that I’m feeling a loss of momentum on it.  Maybe  having finished a big white thing I can’t face another big white thing, but this morning found me with a big chunk of CVM that I got from Judith MacKenzie at Madrona – all spread out on the living room floor like a buffet.

9.  I’m trying to get it into my head that if I just finish the BFL, then I can have the CVM.

10.  I’m also trying to convince myself that washing up that fleece so that I’m ready when I finish the BFL doesn’t count.  I think I’m buying it.

11.  BFL is Blue Faced Leicester.  CVM is California Variegated Mutant.  They are kinds of sheep. 

12. I love the mutant part.