No pictures tonight, as ... again ... it's 2:00 a.m. I don't feel like going to bed, but I don't feel like getting out the digital camera and unrolling the quickly-becoming-unwieldy log cabin blanket for a midnight photo op.
The bottom line is, I haven't felt like knitting for a long time. I both admire and detest ... admiringly detest, perhaps ... those people who, when faced with crisis, hit the stash and whip out some beautiful piece of finished knitting in, if not a day, a weekend. I've been working on the log cabin blanket since late winter. We don't even want to talk about how long ago I started Celtic Icon. Or that pair of socks.
It's not that I've lost interest in knitting. I still passionately love knitting. I just can't seem to find a solid chunk of relaxing time for it. I used to be so obsessed that I'd knit in any spare moment, even 30 seconds worth. When working on a deadline (holiday, for example), I'd even take knitting to work, keep it in the truck, and when out on a cigarette break, go knit standing at the open truck door, cigarette dangling from my mouth.
There have been times when I was able to finish something in a reasonable amount of time. I did a whole felted tote bag for the Knitting Olympics (okay, yeah, it was "only" a tote bag, but for me, *any* finished thing was a big deal). I knit an entire Faroese-style shawl in a few months one winter/spring. Those were the good old days.
Now I can't get an entire row completed on the log cabin blanket without my brain going all Rainman on me, and taking off on some tangent or another that absolutely Must be dealt with Right Now.
I'm wondering if I'm burned out with my current projects for the very reason that they've been languishing so long. I used to have a sort of self-imposed rule, that I wouldn't have more than three projects going at any one time - socks, something simple, something complex - and I wouldn't start anything new until I'd finished one of them. Maybe that strategy isn't the proper one for my current frame of mind and life circumstances. Maybe I really need to just chuck them all for a bit, and start something spiffy and new, with a hope of finishing in a few weeks. A new pair of socks (something quick and easy, not ungodly complicated). A new bag from "Bags: A Knitters Dozen" or whatever the hell the name of that book is, I bought it years ago and never made anything from it. Even another Faroese-style shawl. That was probably one of the most enjoyable projects I ever knit, because I discovered I really liked lace knitting. Albeit, I knit it on sport-weight yarn, so it didn't take the rest of this life and a lien on half the next. But I dearly love that shawl, and could easily make another similar one in that weight of yarn.
I just made a Freudian typo ... did you ever notice how close the words "yarn" and "yearn" are. Hmmm.
I wanted to learn to design my own lace last year, and got a book on interlibrary loan about that. I was having a blast with that book when the time was up, so I asked for it for ... I don't know, birthday, Christmas, something. The Dread Reverend - World's Most Perfect Boyfriend that he is - got it for me. But since then I never took time to get back to it. Maybe that's what I need to do ... work through that book, and begin learning my own lace designing. At least, it would certainly get my mind off my current troubles.
Not to put too fine a point on it, I told my friend Wren tonight I was considering spraying the walls with ketchup and then running away, in a feeble attempt to make it look like Something Had Happened To Me and it wasn't my fault. Or perhaps burning some bizarre substances I could find around the place ... an old radio, an entire carton of cigarettes including the cardboard, acrylic yarn - and leaving the pile of ash in the middle of the living room floor, with a few charred pieces of my clothing.
I would, except ... I wouldn't do that to the Dread Reverend (aka The World's Best Boyfriend). Who, unfortunately is in Kansas City ... a large contribution to my current mental state.
I think it's time to go to bed before I get any more bright ideas.
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