Thinky McThinkerton

Every so often I get in an introspective mood. The last few days have been A Mood and a Half. Feh. It's tiring, at times. This time I'm busy trying to decide if I'm really an anxious person, or simply insecure. How to push myself as a writer. Where I want to go from this point (because, really, it's a wide open game right now.) The past. My past, and my revisionist tendencies. My omnipresent, ever changing Now and how to navigate it.

Very Zen. In the meantime, I actually got some work done today. More than I'd anticipated, to tell the truth. Then I went to my own personal Thotful Spot with my friend and her sister and then on to lunch (and probably freaked friend's sister out like heck and darn; the social work training, it destroys your social propriety filters.) It was nice, being a 'lady who lunch(es)'. Well, not really a lady who lunches in the sense of the song, but I was sort of ladylike (for a bit), and I did lunch, so....

I've been working on my mother's shawl. Oddly enough, for a simple pattern it's exhausting. I like it, don't get me wrong, and I will probably make the pattern again when I get around to making a shawl for myself, but it's endless garter stitch. I don't know if I've told you my Feelings About Endless Garter Stitch, but they are extreme. Well, let me show you the shawl first:

Bernat alpaca in a light tan. She chose the color, not me; if I'd done so, it would be fuscia or something else equally bright and obnoxious. But I guess she wants to be elegant or restrained or something. Whatever.

It's the Kay's Tess D'Urbervilles Shawl, one of the many Danish style shawls out there now. I'm making it in a heavier yarn than called for in the original pattern to make the shawl larger than the original pattern. It's a problem common to the Scandinavian set. Vikings did not breed for delicate.

I don't know how long it will take to finish it, but I've got about a collar's worth of shawl there with only two or three hours of knitting. I'm hopeful that the endless garter will not be quite as endless as I fear.

I detest garter stitch. I know most people regard it as the simplest thing ever made because it's just knitting. Knit 1 over and over and over and over ad nauseam. I did that with my Mile of Yarn Who Scarf (Season 12 Original) and I bear the repetitive knit injury to prove it.

Give me a nice, sturdy seed stitch any day.