The vest you ask?

Brenda of the comments asked yesterday if I had finished my husbands vest.

Sigh No.  It sits there in a wee basket all its own taunting me, saying not a word but speaking loudly none the less.  I don't have that much to do on it.  I have only the upper body but I have not worked on it a day since last summer.  

I know I mentioned the way the days I worked went through most of the fall.  I worked my regular Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays but for many weeks in a row, I also worked Mondays.  It still gave me 3 days off each week, but for weeks, I did not have 2 off together. I found that so incredibly wearing, to the point when asked to do it again after Christmas, I cried.  I would have been glad to do it, but somehow, there was just nothing left to give. I think it is connected to the over stimulation, the incredible energy that I felt working with knitters searching for yarn.  

My very forgiving hubby's vest has been a victim of that.  I found that following the pattern was hard.  Hard on my eyes, hard on my brain, hard to do when I had no down time after a day of recovery.  Overstimulating. 

Colourwork is like playing a grand symphony.  It is wonderful and marvelous and deeply compelling. There is a pattern to follow flawlessly, there are colours of yarns to change, there is the rhythmic music that flows through you as you create magic on your needles.  Just thinking about it, I can feel that energy weaving it mystic spell.

Knitting lace is a sort of play.  It is fun and challenging and relaxing.  Even the tinking back is fun.  Irritating, but fun so long as you can discover what you did that caused you to reknit yet again.  Ishbel, for all my problems reading the charts, was fun.  

But the colourwork?  The colourwork demands more.  Colourwork at this sort of scale, demands everything and then it asks for just a little more. And for a very long time, I had no more to give.  I was ready only for the relaxing, peaceful joys of garter stitch.        

There is magic in colourwork, but when I get there I want it to be right.  The fall upcoming will be the third fall I have been promising the vest, thinking about it and working on it. It needs to be finished.  

Maybe my plan should be to take it with me camping this summer, where the colourwork can be finished in the great and peaceful glory of the high country.  Where there is nothing more demanded of me than making a meal here and there and to keep the coffee hot, where I scoot my chair around through the day, seeking the sun.  Maybe my plan should be to take it where I have no choice but to work on it.

Two (or 3) extra balls of each of the colours is a bag.  All I need to do, is tuck in the basket with the partially knitted vest and the book and the van is packed for summer knitting.  I will tuck in a little emergency knitting too, but that is only in case of a real emergency, for instance if I finish and have nothing to knit (oh, the horror!). 1 ball of sock yarn is the limit.  

Camping isn't that far away.  I am already starting to air and pack the van.  It's been a real pleasure to spend time this morning thinking about summer knitting, focusing on this marvelous work in progress, firming up a hazy plan for when to get to it.  I have not felt the need to push aside the thought and close my ears to its siren calls.  Must be that I am finally ready.  

Brenda, I owe you one.  Maybe two. Thank you.