Red Endings

I worked on all sorts of things this weekend, just as I said I would, working only on existing projects and having a really really good time.

I worked upstairs, in the light that now stops in the dining room a couple of times a day.

I've always loved the way this room filled with light, and I love it even more since we put the second window in. More sun and more light. It made it easy to work on existing things even as my fingers craved new ones (Does this mean that I am a startitis junky?)

I had to stop and take a photo just before I finished the red sweater. Weeks of work all comes down to 11 or twelve stitches. There is something so right in this, something that fills me with joy, but also fills me with a wee bit of sadness too. The rich red yarn was possibilities and this is what I will miss most; that its possibilities are done.

It isn't something to regret for more than a heartbeat. I have an absolutely lovely new sweater in possibilities place.

A red sweater, taken from a pile of red woolly yarn, knit without a pattern, no list of rows to count, no guide other than the 'use your common sense' directions supplied by the how to get there writing in Barbara Walker's Knitting From the Top Down.

Knitting a sweater this way is fulfilling in ways that are hard to describe. Elizabeth Zimmermann's works put me in the drivers seat and Barbara Walker's teaches me how to build the car.