twinset.us

Dear Ellen,

You knew from the title that this post would contain some very bad judgment.  It does.

For some reason I decided that working on Fichu, Gesundheit — the next Vanessa project — would be  a great way to fill time while I was nursing a bad shoulder spasm that started last Thursday.  Yes, I was taking flexeril(tm) and trying to keep my left arm immobilized, but that didn’t stop me.  As the photo shows, I did finally make some progress, but it was only after roughly 8 hours or knitting, tinking, frogging and more knitting.  When I finally realized I was misinterpreting a chart symbol it went a lot better.  MAYBE this could have worked had I already done a few repeats of the pattern, but I had only done the garter stitch neckband and hadn’t even studied the chart.  Oh, wait…studying the chart.  I suppose that might have helped too.  I can report that today the shoulder is much better and when I finish here, I plan on doing another repeat…with a clear head.  I hope the foregoing builds your sense of confidence in our senior military leaders.

A very sensible person would have picked one of the other projects already underway.  For instance, I’ve only gotten about 4 inches into the skirt part of A Stitch Away From Genius — hours to go before I’d have to think of anything other than remembering to slip the first stitch of each row.  And the Robin’s Egg Vest is at point where I can do it pretty much without thinking.  Cinnamon Tee takes some counting to keep track of when to decrease for the fitting, but other than that it’s stockinette…so with so many better options, what the heck was I thinking?  I guess I just needed a challenge…and I had not a bit of sense in between my ears at the time.

And evidently, I’m not done with the startitis.  I’ve got this lovely Alpaca from gentle Narcissus of Table Rock Llamas — she’s not pictured on their web site as she’s not for sale.  With it I intend to make Not So Naive with the “Ingenue” pattern in Custom Knits.  It is a great boatneck sweater with a quasi-standup “portrait” collar.  And I’ve committed to make one of two pair of booties for one of the young Lieutenants who has done so much for women in the Navy (including getting the senior Navy women organized on Facebook!) and is now expecting twins.  I’m calling them Hopeful Booties as her first name is Hope. I’m using the Baby Life Ring Booties Pattern from Cat Bordhi’s Magical Knitting site.

Perhaps the muscle relaxers are still affecting me…I do have to be ready to move in less than a month and I’m going to start more projects?!

With that thought in mind, I think I’ll go knit.

Love, Jan

P.S. I was very busy the last two weeks of silence…several trips and mandatory fun.  No need to bore you with it!