Slogging

Sunday morning, after a long week: Well, actually, it was a short week, what with Labor Day, but it felt like a long week, I think because the crappy air quality gave me an allergy-induced headache all week, despite drugs, and, like many people, this week had the feel of back-to-school for me, even though I'm not going back to school and no one in the household is going back to school, but nonetheless, everyone at work has come back from field work and various vacations and thus now we collectively took a deep breath and plunged wholeheartedly, 30-odd-strong of us, into another year, with new projects, many of which I seem to be heading up or playing a major role in, such that for the first time in a long time, I'd had to write down all my duties, just so I could keep track of them; nonetheless, I felt buffeted in many directions this week by stuff that had to be done NOW and yet I still didn't do everything I was supposed to (sorry, Melissa!) and had to keep reminding myself that no one's perfect, that I'm doing as much as I can, that I asked for more challenges and was given them, so this whirlwind is my fault, so to speak, and if my head ever stopped hurting, maybe I could cope, but I just don't know...

Well, the week was like that sentence. Now you understand, right?

So, when I did have free time, I knit. I knit on the baby sweaters, slowly, grudgingly - maybe it's the DK weight, maybe it's the superwash wool, maybe it's because I'm making two of them and I get easily bored, but I am not loving this project. I am determined, just plain grit-my-teeth-determined to get these done, so I keep slogging away.

I knit the Minimalist Cardigan. I've completed about 7 inches of the back and I still absolutely love knitting this.

I knit Silver Belle - I believe I have a grand total of three rows completed on the peplum, some parts of which have been knit twice, as apparently I cannot interpret correctly the wrong side rows of cable charts. I hope it's correct now, as otherwise, I am going to be knitting a sweater full of 'design features,' as my patience for making corrections seems to have disappeared. I can cope with knitting one row on this a night, so look for this to be completed in a year or so.

I spun! I haven't spun all summer, I think, but the Parallel Plyers group, which meets monthly at WEBS, met this Tuesday night and I resisted the urge to go home and collapse after work, instead flying down the Mass Pike to meet up with these lovely spinners. Barb Parry, from Foxfire Fiber Farms, even complimented me on the evenness of the Ashland Bay merino/silk I was spinning! She also mentioned that I ought not to let the singles rest too long on my bobbin, advice which I was grateful to receive, but now I feel guilty for leaving two-thirds of a bobbin full of this single all summer. Ah, well, one of these days...

Since I don't have enough to do and am just sitting around twiddling my thumbs - ha! - I signed up to take a day-long dyeing workshop at WEBS on September 23rd with the charming and talented Kangaroo Dyer herself, Gail Callahan. Anybody want to join me?

While I was at it (didn't I just write something to the effect that I was not going to school this fall?), I found out about a beginning weaving class at the North Quabbin Textile Studio in Orange, the next town over. That class won't start till November - plenty of time for me to finish up the baby sweaters and the Minimalist Cardigan and Silver Belle and the afghan for Christmas for my parents and oh shit the hand-spun shawl and top in time for Rhinebeck and God knows that Celtic Dream sweater has been sitting dutifully, quietly, patiently, next to my end of the couch for months now. Not to mention other WIPS stored mercifully out of sight. Not to mention the fact that I feel the urge to design something of my own, beyond the b-a-b-Y blanket level of design.

Would someone just shake me and tell me that this is just what creative people DO, that I shouldn't feel guilty or burdened by having all these projects going?