Look! It’s the Minni sweater. This little sweater is knit from three colours of yarn.  You use a fair bit of the two main colours, and then there’s just a little bit of the third. In my case, that third colour is the pretty green.  It’s for the belt in the back, the edges, the i-cord ties… and you knit the belt and ties first and then set them aside so that you can knit them into the project at the right moments. I did that.  I made a little pile of things, and they’ve been on the coffee table waiting to be added in at all the correct moments.  One side of the wee belt got knit in pretty early on, and one of the ties was added too.

The other ties have been waiting until it was their turn.  This morning, I unpicked the provisional cast on from the other end of the belt, and knit it in, and then the next instruction said to add one of the ties. I looked around, and couldn’t find those ties, and then I remembered.

Yesterday morning, before I cheerfully made my way to The Loopy Ewe, I got up at 4:30am, and added the few things to my luggage that are always last minute – like my computer stuff, and my knitting.  Now, I am not the sort of person that can actually do things at 4:30am.  Maybe you can, but I can’t.  It’s part of the reason that it was important for me to breastfeed my kids.  If I’d have had to get up, go to the kitchen, get something, warm something or make something, it would have ended in some form of disaster. Better for all of us that their food system wasn’t something I could mix up wrong in the night, and could administer while we were both lying down. I try to be effective in the wee hours, but it’s just not who I am – all I can do effectively at 4:30am is drink coffee and weep a little.

I’ve learned to work around it.  When I have to get up then (it’s always for a flight) there’s a system in place to keep me from screwing something up.  Joe puts the coffeemaker on automatic so it’s there the moment I wake (I can drink coffee at 4:30, but not make it.) I set the cab up the night before, and under no circumstances do I leave any important packing to the last. I make no choices at 4:30, and I certainly don’t try to think. I put everything that I’ll need to use in the morning, and then add to a suitcase on the coffee table. This is what I did with the Minni sweater.  When I put it down the night before, I put it down with all the other stuff going to Colorado- and went to bed.   In the morning, I got up, drank coffee and put the stuff from the table into my purse, or – sort of.

I  picked up the pieces of the sweater, folded them tidily, and lifted them into my suitcase.  Then I added the extra skeins of yarn, which I’d added so that I can’t  run out while I’m here, and then- then I looked at those ties, sitting there on the table, and I tried to think what I could possibly need them for, why I could have thought I needed to put them in the pile, and I left them right on the table.  I have no explanation for why I did this, especially since I knew that the part where I had to attach them was coming up, and I did have them together with everything else – I just couldn’t see how they were relevant, and there they stayed.

I can’t explain this. I know better than to attempt thinking that early. I know I can’t be counted upon to think that early, and that’s why I organize myself the night before. I know the rule is that I just put the stuff from the table into the bag, without re-imagining why I need them, and I don’t know why that system fell apart.  It’s not like I forgot the ties – I actively decided not to bring them, all the while knowing what they were for, and why I might want them, and now they’re in Toronto, and I’m in Colorado, and I’m not stopping the knitting.  I’ll have to figure out how to add them later, and apparently, come up with a new system for packing – one that’s foolproof – because despite thinking I’d done that? Apparently I came up with a better fool.