Knitting Friday

How humiliating! I posted Website Wednesday on Thursday. The humiliating part is that I thought it was Wednesday. That’s what illness and major holidays in the middle of the week do to you.

Yesterday, traveling about half the length of NJ, it was eerily empty of traffic. New Year’s Day is a shopping day here, even in our Blue Law counties, when it doesn't fall on Sunday. But the traffic (noon time) and the parking lots at the malls looked new-economy empty.

And so it begins. What are Americans going to do when they don’t have the financial resources to shop? Will they examine their existence and try to find more meaning? Will they hunker down behind the “God will provide” mentality? Will they shudder, as I do, at the continual carnage in warfare and stop making asinine, hypocritical excuses for it? Will they finally take steps to achieve a Utopia envisioned by philosophers?

Nah! I’m afraid we’re just a bunch of beasts. And pretty nasty ones at that.

Maybe that’s why I’m bored with knitting; which is very unusual for me. Though apparently, not for the rest of the world because the 1/4 million member Ravelry web site has a thread on this topic: Knitters seem to be bored.

It could just be the nature of the knitters. We wind up trying, like Ulysses, to strive, to seek....to find.

But was he ever happy? Probably not. After all, that line “How dull it is to pause” was said by a man whose exploits were made into one of the greatest known ancient epics. This guy had a difficult 20 year trip from Troy to Ithaca and yet he was bored. He definitely didn’t have a knitter’s temperament.

Though I guess, while Ulysses is salivating to build a new ship; knitters drool over the next project.

Right now, I have three working projects: a pink mohair lace shawl knit on US7 which is taking forever (what was I thinking?); a green wool garter stitch shawl with picot edging knit on the diagonal; and a blue 25% wool shawl in a YO, K2tog pattern. The only positive change is that I found a crocheted edging for the pink which should give it a “pop.”

But I am bored and my brown sweater languishes. It’s definitely going to be a vest and would take only a few hours to complete but a week load of discipline.

My latest “to-do” project is:

http://knitty.com/ISSUEfall08/PATTkinetic.html

It has some disadvantages: it’s not reversible and it’s not diagonal. But I think it’s a good compromise. It’s not lace and it don’t want the absolute concentration those projects need but it does have a very distinct pattern which will take more concentration than the mindless projects on the needles now.

So, as Ulysses, I am yearning in desire to follow knowledge like a sinking star, and I will now get back to my knitting.