A palate cleanser

I feel antsy the last week.  I cannot seem to settle to anything at all.  Perhaps it is the looming end of winter?  I feel like something different.

I did knit something different yesterday.  I pulled out my Drachenfels or perhaps I ought to call this an inspired by Drachenfels.  I am not really following the patterns in it very much at all.  I have a slightly bigger yarn.  

Mine is a DK, the original is Rosy Green Wool Sport.  I don't have quite the same amounts of yarn that she used for her project.  I started with 538 m of black, 358 m of red and 179 m of grey.  The original used 304 m of colour A, 276 m of colour B and 304 m of colour C, which is a much more even distribution of colours than I have.  My goal is to try to keep the design details as close as I can while using my colours to get the best possible look with my strongly contrasting colours.

As you can see, my wee ball of grey yarn is pretty much half gone.  The pattern has one stripe of colour C midpoint in this section, my red. I haven't quite decided yet if this is going to be a single stripe followed by a bit more of the grey and black alternating or if this is going to all three colours alternating for the rest of this section.  Maybe three rows of red?

I really love this little dot detail.  There is a wee bit of it in the last section where the main colour should be red and I will repeat this feature in black.  

A close up detail of the stripes.  I really like it all so far.

Knitting this feels a little bit like I am being naughty.  I fill my world with should be knitting sometimes instead of just taking the joy in it, which is really, very, very silly.  Part of me feels like I should be knitting on the lightweight sweaters I have in progress so that I could wear them this spring and some of me feels like I ought to be finishing the edging on my Shetland shawl.  Sure I should, just like I should be cleaning my house and doing laundry, but none of those things seem to calm my antsy feelings at all.  Sometimes I really wish I were a monogamus knitter, but no. I shall work with what I am.  

I will allow myself some naughty knitting, some winter knitting at the end of winter.  That is what calms the ansty and captures me.  So much of life, you cannot do that.  Most of the time you must do what you must but at this point in my life, retirement, I am just going to follow my heart and knit the things I want to.