Summer Sky

The picot cast-off is tedious. It's just not knitting fun. When I reached the halfway point I put it aside, and I started this Branching Out scarf with KnitPicks' Andean Treasure. All Alpaca, in a color called Summer Sky. I'm not sure I'm loving this pattern (is that heresy?) but it's reasonably mindless knitting, a nice yarn to work with, and I'll have it done in no time.

I was hoping to start a small project that thrilled me, and this isn't it, but it will do. It will give me the break I need before going back and finishing the shawl. I know myself well enough to know that I'm putting off finishing it because I don't want it to be over. I have a hard time with endings, even when they are accomplishments.

Why fret? Waiting in my basket is the Fabulous Manos Wildflower Cable Pullover. Now that's some knittin' right there.

I'm not that clever

"I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the North..."

If only my first line could say everything...

But no, I don't think I can be witty, or smart, or whatever it takes to blog like the rest of them. And I'm not Isak Dinesen. I knit, though. I work, too. I laugh, though not as much lately (better work on that).

I'm about to reach the end of the Shoalwater shawl. I cast on on my birthday, so I've been working on it for almost two months -- pretty steadily, with a few breaks, but it has given me so much pleasure that I'm almost sad to be finishing it. I've knitted myself and all my wishes and joys and sorrows into every stitch. And this shawl will be a place to go when I need to wrap myself in strength, for these past months have both given and taken all I've had.

Two more rows, then the picot cast-off and i-cord edging, just as the pattern says. Then I'll block it, and we'll see what my fiercely-knitting fingers have managed to create.