Easily Distracted by Shiny Objects
I’ve been working on a secret project this past week — well, not that secret, just a secret from the person I’m going to give it to, who may or may not check this blog, so I can’t post about it until I’ve given it away. Which could be weeks from now. Rest assured that the project is coming along swimmingly, some pieces are blocking as we speak, and I hope to wrap it up in three or four days.
Meanwhile, I have been easily distracted. Yesterday in particular, I sat doing work and my mind kept wandering off to the million things I wanted to knit right then even though I was working, not knitting, so the point was moot.
I try to be, and for the most part am, a fairly monogamous knitter. Sometimes, I give way to temptation and begin a new project — or two or three new projects — before I have finished the one I’m working on, but it tends to knock me a little off-balance to be trying to finish more than one thing at a time. As I work on one project-in-progress, my mind keeps casting about frantically to the other thing, screaming helpfully “BUT WHAT ABOUT THE SOCKS?! WHEN WILL YOU FINISH THE SOCKS?!” I don’t enjoy this mental berating, and so I try to confine myself to one project while allowing small distractions, according to these self-imposed rules:
(1) If I am knitting something that takes a long time, like a sweater, I’m allowed to do a small project, like a hat, between finishing pieces of the sweater.
(2) I am allowed to knit a swatch or two for a future project whenever I want to after the yarn for that project is purchased — usually more or less immediately.
Which brings me to today’s knitting content: the swatches I knit for Eunny Jang’s Endpaper Mitts.
I bought four balls of Knit Picks Palette to knit two pairs of these mitts, though as you can see from the swatch on the bottom left I also briefly abandoned the Palette to try out some Mountain Colors Bearfoot in one. (And oh how it bled! And I kind of knew it would but did nothing to prevent it!) It’s been an interesting exercise in color doing these four swatches, and I could do about a million more except I’ve experimented enough to figure out my gauge and I’m ready to get going on the mitts as soon as my current project is complete.
An aside: This is my first time using the Palette, and I like it more than various comments on the Internet led me to expect I would. Not that I can recall the source or exact nature of any of those comments — I just had a vaguely negative impression. Is anyone else extremely tempted to buy the “Palette sampler” every time they look at the Knit Picks site? I always think, “Oh, how great it would be to have all 30 colors!” Followed immediately by “Oh my God, I do not want 30 more balls of yarn!”
Anyway, I’m thinking I’ll start with a pair in the light gray and some dark green Mountain Colors Bearfoot I have in the stash, and then I’ll probably do the other pair in brown and pink. Or light gray and brown. We’ll see.
With the Endpaper Mitt swatching taken care of, I should have been pleasantly anticipating doing further work toward the completion of my secret project, or at least looking forward to starting the mitts afterward. Instead, I started thinking of creating thumbless baby mittens in the Fair Isle pattern from the mitts to give to a particularly adorable baby of my acquaintance. I was ready to cast on for them right that second, but I held steady. And then I cast on and soon after abandoned an afghan square in Thorn Stitch (from the second Barbara Walker stitch treasury). And then I ordered some yarn: a skein of Handmaiden Sea Silk in Sangria for a lacy shawl, two skeins of Hand Jive Nature’s Palette sock yarn (one in Dark Teal, one in Indian Paintbrush) for a pair of Red Herring socks, and the Icosa Ball pattern (to be made with stash yarn), all from Knit-Purl in Portland.
Because, you know, I needed more projects.
Good grief.
January 25th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Aw, that’s too bad about the bleeding - I love the way the variegated Bearfoot looks against the crisp white. The brown and pink is nice too, though. Hmmm… I never thought about doing those mitts in Palette, but I do want to make a pair, and I do have some Palette in my stash… *lightbulb* Thanks for the idea!