Forgotten Projects Part Two

Yesterday I had a day off work for an appointment with a new doctor. I was pretty stressed out afterwards so I put on an episode of American Horror Story and sat down to sort out my yarn, a task I’ve been meaning to do for a while.

We’ve finally resigned ourselves to staying in the current apartment for a while. Don’t get me wrong; we like it. It’s a nice space and it’s in a good location. They don’t mind that we have so many animals. All in all it’s great but the rent is high and it makes it difficult to save for our own place.

This resignation has lead us to cleaning up the spare room which until now has been mostly for storage. We’re going to get a desk in there and a recliner to make it a cosy space for relaxing and writing.

Part of clearing it up involved sorting my yarn and like before, I found projects I had forgotten.

This is my worsted-weight snuggly shawl I started… I don’t even know when. A while before leaving the UK so probably about a year ago. It is a simple knit from the Acadian Shawl pattern on Ravelry, very satisfying to do yet easy to remember and do without thinking about it constantly. A great TV-knit.

This photo was taken a long time before I left the UK. I know that because my shawl is about three rows from being finished. Yeah, that’s right – I abandoned it just before finishing it.

D’oh.

I’m going to figure out where in the diamond pattern I reached and then it should be finished and bound off within half an hour.

Forgetting projects like this is a fun way to distract myself from the fact I have lost all motivation for all of my current projects, but please tell me I’m not the only one who does this!

Forgotten Projects

Spring is coming.

At least that’s what my girlfriend keeps saying. I think she might be ahead of herself, willing the weather into some semblance of warmth when in fact the ground outside is blanketed with white. It snowed a few days ago, recent enough that the dog walks are pleasant and not too slippery.

When she was tidying the spare room I began organising my yarn stash. Some of it I had to let go but I’m still left with plenty. There was, deep in that stash, a bag I’d forgotten.

It must have come from England with me but moving to Canada is a blur now. It feels as though I’ve always been here. Looking back, this is the bag I shoved in my suitcase because it was full of half-finished projects and I didn’t want to send that through the mail.

Inside that bag I found this.

This is a half-finished shawlette made from some Handmaiden Sea Silk. I bought this two years ago at Martina’s and it has been languishing ever since. I’ve tried to knit a few things with it but nothing has worked yet.

The colours are sublime but that’s nothing compared to the texture. It’s smooth and cool and light. It’s squishable but slinky. I love it.

Yet… I don’t think this project is right for it. I think I might be ripping it back to try something new once more. Thankfully it seems to be holding up quite well to the abuse, though I won’t rip it back until I find something that it wants to be.

Sometimes yarns don’t listen to you when you tell it what project it should be. I get this a lot, actually. Sometimes I’ll buy a yarn with a project in mind and the yarn will flat out refuse to cooperate. It’s fortunate I don’t have a problem with frogging projects (I’m a process knitter) because otherwise I would be in a constant stream of tears.

This sea silk needs to be something beautiful but more importantly it needs to be something I can use a lot and admire. I’m not the sort of person to put things away to gaze at with distant adoration. I knit to use my knitted goods.

If only I could figure out what this sea silk wants to be.