-- and began another one. I’ve been drooling over a particular designer’s work, and one particular item but she only sells kits of her designs. Le sigh. I can appreciate a desire to keep one’s artistic vision pure, and if you do things that are truly unique and signature items so that they are recognizable as Yours Truly’s sweaters, ball gowns (knitted ballgowns? Delphine Wilson perhaps???) then that’s well and good, but erm, garter stitch and slip stitch? I’m not willing to plunk down that much scratch for a simple pattern and wool that will never be used.

Back up a little. A dear friend’s daughter admired the castle blanket, and asked for one as only a 14 year-old can, to wit, “Uhm . . . if you ever want to knit me a blanket . . . I’d like that.” Hokay. I have trouble asking for favors, and according to the birthdate on my driver’s license, I is all growed up.

So, while the castle blan in all its Lunchbox glory (why did I put magenta in among the circus pastels????) is a cool thing, its coolness is dated. Growing up in the eighties, unicorns and rainbows were ultra-cool when I was 14. And they were so babyish two years later. Ewwwwww. And I’m selfish enough that if I’m going to spend the better part of a year knitting a blanket for someone I know; whose tastes are not yet set; and whose budget for colors and environment is going to be on the . . . inexpensive side for some time, well, I don’t want this to end up hidden in a closet because it’s no longer cool to tote around the equivalent of a SpongeBob logo. Not as an undergraduate, at least. (As a doctoral candidate, it has a certain amount of ironic/eccentric class.)

So, while this chevron thing is working up simply and is relatively speedy to knit (slip stitch and garter grow ever so slowly) and the exchange shawl still looks like a lump of ice blue and white marl (albeit a bigger lump of ice blue and white marl) and the black ribbed sweater clicks along nicely, I have but one catch.

I have a metric boatload of ends to weave in.

Ick ick ick. One of the things I love about the prevalence of DVDs and the tendency to release entire seasons’ worth of shows on them is that I can pop a set into the multidisc changer and just go go go—but what happens when you come to an end? We just finished Babylon 5—all five years’ worth, and now, while there are several movies that need to get viddied, my heart just isn’t in it. It feels like getting divorced and then going out to a singles’ bar—I’m not up for a one evening stand; two hours with a handful of characters. (And a sidebar; after we finished watching Bab 5, and all the commentary and goodies for the fans, AND spotting a mutual friend on camera who passed away a few years back {so we’re good and weepy, little emotional marshmallows that we are} we put on Tim Burton’s Big Fish—which is all about communication issues. When that was over, Gareth said, “Why don’t we just put on Old Yeller?” I suggested Where the Red Fern Grows, or perhaps A Day No Pigs Would Die.)

And I look at the finishing basket with three blankets and three (or four?) pairs of socks and here I am, blogging, reading email, and knitting on the exchange shawl.

Can we say avoidance? I knew you could.

And Gareth and I are talking about what we’re doing for vacation this year—we haven’t decided yet. It’ll either be three and four-day weekends up north in the cabin (cheap, easy to fit in multiple mini-vacations); time at the John Campbell folk school (a chance to delve deeper into other esoteric interests); or Italy in September (spendy, but o! Florence!) The trouble is, we’ll have to decide because well, we can’t do them all.

So. Here’s Monday’s post, and will be back Wednesday, but right now, there’s just too much.