Knitting for Others

Sometimes, Life pulls me toward directions that are unexpected and nowhere in my scope. My schedule is disrupted, and timelines are delayed. In the back of my mind, there was an urgency to remedy hurts in the past. These old wounds had allowed the righteous vengeful side of me to rise up and lash out without hearing explanations. I do have a bad habit of talking without thinking, and that goes for writing too. Those urgencies may be the reason why my brain has been so scattered as of late. The priorities between home, knitting, work, and the bunnies are scrambled.

A great example is the green Caron yarn that mysteriously screamed to be knitted. All other projects had to be pushed aside until I heeded its call. I even have other green yarns in my stash that would make a better fabric, but the Caron demanded to be made. Acquiesing to its wishes, I grabbed the giant one pound skein and size US8 needles. I did a quick search on Ravelry and discovered an old favorite “I want to make that someday” pattern, the Pinwheel Baby Blanket by Genia Planck. After I did the i-cord bind off and washed it, I folded it and it sat on my lap for a while. The color reminded me of my SP8 Pal, Molly. Recently on Ravelry a thread opened up about bad swaps, and the old hurts came back. After I wrote my words, I realized that I was blinded in anger from the “life got in the way and that’s that” words. A great friend read my posts and assured me that I was not ranting. Yet I know why the blanket wanted to be made. It wants to go to Molly as a peace offering. OCD has set in to find her and see if she is on Ravelry yet. If she is, I will apologize if my words hurt her, but I really was hurt too. Maybe I should write out the e-mail message I drafted and snail mail it with the blanket. Or maybe I should just let bygones be bygones and give it to charity. I think that would be a better solution.

There is another blanket in the making, Jen and Chris’ blanket. It is a log cabin style inspired by the 08-Autumn colorway and includes others yarns in ivory, brown, grey, and tan. I had knitted about a 2-foot square of this blanket and decided that I am going to frog it and then re-knit it. Why? Because instead of binding off each finished side then pickup new stitches, I kept the stitches live by putting them on a 47-inch circular. Until someone pointed out that the blanket will not be increased by much, I made the executive decision, but still have not ripped it up yet. I want to photograph it before I do so.

For more of my current project load, there are umpteen pairs of socks, 3 more baby blankets, one which happens to be a test knit. I am still trying to finish my other test knits – a pair of socks, a hat, and a child’s vest. The socks have been started, but I am not crazy about the yarn I chose. I may have to frog that one too and re-knit. The test hat has an error in it, and I am awaiting the chart corrections by the designer. As for the vest, I have to switch yarns and re-knit, but it is a fun project.

Because my FO juices needed flowing, I knitted up a couple of orange and maroon hats which will go to the “Knitting for VA Tech” KAL. These Hokie hats are based on 72-stitches in the round and were a quick fix to satisfaction. My apologies for no photos, but I will have them up soon. Daylight has not be kind to taking photos this past weekend, and if I take them during lunch on the weekdays, I find myself wanting to stay out of work! Until then, I give you a Saturday Sky from two weekends ago when Rich and I were running errands after seeing the VA Tech football team win their first game. =:8