Wednesday 29 January 2020

Tilting at Windmills

My shawl of today isn't a shawl.  It isn't a scarf.  Today, as yesterday while out and about, I am wearing this delicious thing.


Seriously, go get yourself one treat, one yummy skein of delicious fingering weight yarn, add a skein of really fine quality mohair, Shibui or Rowan and knit a Huj Tub.

I have been struggling lately.  If I am strictly sticking to truth, I have been struggling for several months.  I am pretty sure that a lot of it has to do with the low number of daylight hours we get at this time of year.  By struggle, I don't mean anything deep or dark, but more that my mind is far too often thinking of all the sad things of life.  The best thing for me to do is to keep busy.  That more than anything is what this spate of deeper cleaning and all the cooking I have been doing lately is about.

As I have been scurrying about doing stuff, I keep coming up against the old days and my pretty yellow study.  I think often about how once I left that room, there was no other pile of knitting around my house. I felt that since Mr. Needles did not spread the trappings of his hobby all over the house, that it was kind of my obligation not to spread my vocation about too freely.  The house was a shared space.

I also think about how easy it was to make the decision that I could knit in my living room at my wee house since it was my own place and only mine.  Oddly enough, it did have to be a real decision and it didn't just happen in the flow of living.   There was a little bit of bravado in it, a little bit of a 'so there world, mess with me will you.  Watch me knit anywhere I want'.  In the grand scheme of sticking it to the world, this seems a very small thing, I suppose, but if you have been in my shoes, you would be surprised at how big those little rebellions can be in the moment.

Allowing myself to knit all over my house has never been in question since.  I knit everywhere.  Other than the shared kitchen, my house is covered by knitting.  I sometimes regret that decision.  Every once in a blue moon, wishing I did not have knitting spilling out everywhere is a thing.  It has been consuming my space all winter.



There are three very tidy containers that my WIPs ought to fit in.  I'm generally okay with that, but when I started knitting winter sweaters without finishing summer sweaters, it got a bit out of hand.


I am okay with knitting an ongoing project from a bag sitting at my feet.  I am less okay with the swath of large bags that go from my feet all the way to the window.  It got even worse when I started mucking about with sock yarn bits and ends and monster socks.

And that isn't even the half of it.


There is the Sock Monkey Blanket in a large bag at the other side of my sofa.

Even my pristine corner, the freshly tidied books with the pretty little chair come out from my study, have stuff on them, in them, by them.



See the stuff to be combed under the game table? See it by the TV? Yes there is that too. And if you look at the bookshelf corner above, you will see one spinning wheel.  I haven't even taken a picture of the winding station which sits at the other end of my sofa rather than having the end table there.

I do think about getting something different to keep my WIPs in, something larger that could accommodate them all, but I know me.  I'd get a fourth and need a fifth.  I'd get a fifth and need more.  Don't get me wrong.  I love my stuff, and why wouldn't I have it all over the place?  It's my place. I love being able to sit down and just start something interesting.  I love having a place to live that is me through and through.

It is just that every once in a while, I wish it were those days when I had a door and  a reason to keep it contained.  Such are the thoughts that occupy space in my mind just a little more than they ought in the dark of winter.

So since I cannot walk in my living room for stuff all the stuff out and about, and since it is the dark of winter and I have nothing better to do, what do you think I am going to do?  Yup.  I am going to start something new.

Take that dark of winter.  Ha, I say to you.  Just HA.

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