One dream that occurred more than once showed me being called into the admissions office of a school and being told that I had been accepted, under one condition...
...I had to give up knitting. NooooooOOOO!!! Of course, I didn't want to throw a tantrum and run out of the office, so I sucked it up and accepted their offer, enduring two years of knitting-less life to concentrate on the clarinet.
Now, thankfully this dream didn't happen. However, the result seems to be the same. I was admitted to grad school and upon arrival it appears that all of a sudden I have given up knitting - not intentionally, not officially, not happily, but somewhere along the line my knitting has stopped dead in its tracks. What am I to do when I come home to see this sitting by my couch,
knowing that day after day, week after week, it continues to be ignored? Do you see all those wonderful things in there?
That's a hat that I have nearly finished! It has a lining and everything and all that is left to do is attach the tassel and close up the top. I reached that point over 5 weeks ago and still it remains unfinished.
I threw that fingerless glove in the basket because its mate is done and this one needs only 6 rows of ribbing on the thumb and the ends woven in. And I'll let you in on a secret - on the first one, I just knotted the ends and called it a day. Really. I did. And I don't even feel guilty, except that they're coming undone. No matter, I knit these two a year apart and they're entirely different sizes anyway, so it's not like someone's going to wear them.
That's a Windschief Cowl finished almost 6 weeks ago, yet I still haven't woven in the two ends...
A wonderful pair of mittens to match my winter coat. Look, I even started embroidering my name on one of them! They still need thumbs and linings, but I was so close!
And this next one is the biggest shame.
My Aeolian Shawl. I finished knitting it in July and still it sits unblocked. The softest cashmere I've ever felt, sitting crumpled at the bottom of a basket. It's not right, I tell you. Can you imagine how beautiful it'll be when it's blocked? I pick it up from time to time and am ALWAYS surprised by how soft it is. Unbelievably soft!!! I neeeeeed to block it, if only for that amazing transformation experience that only lace blocking can bring. Maybe I'll save it for one of those metaphorical rainy days.
You know what else there is?
The yarn for a long-desired Staccato sweater of my very own. I had to go to at least 5 different yarn shops in 3 different states just to collect all the colors. I think I started buying the yarn for this over a year ago and I haven't even swatched for it yet!
Why oh why did I have to give up knitting to go to grad school?
So here's the confession: I have time to knit. I do! I spend my entire day on campus and often I find myself with a 3+ hour break with nothing to do (except practice). I could be knitting during that time, but I don't bring my knitting to school with me. For some reason I'm still uncomfortable knitting in public and so it remains home, abandoned, waiting for me to have a day off or a weekend free to settle down and complete some of those projects. And there are more in that basket that I didn't even mention.
It's a sad state that my knitting is in, but I have hope that when the cooler weather begins to settle in I will feel compelled to finish that hat and those mittens, weave in the ends of the cowl, and settle in for a warm, relaxing evening of knitting with a cup of tea and a nice audiobook.
On a somewhat unrelated note: I got an iPhone recently because I dropped my old phone in the toilet and don't have internet at home, so this seemed to fix both problems. I was hoping I would be able to blog with it and took the above pictures on my phone thinking I would be able to blog much more easily, but it appears I can't post them onto the blog from my phone. Anyway, posts might continue to be sporadic for a while. That's just the way life is sometimes.
