Twenty repeats at last!

A belated happy New Year to you all! I’m forgoing my usual blather about my absence (suffice it to say, holiday joy and family togetherness and lots of happy times) since constantly blogging about not blogging is getting a bit silly. Not only are my rather feeble expositions on my lack of posts starting to seem like a bad attempt at trying to attain meta-ness, I’m sure they are dull to no end to read. So, none of that this time. Instead, there’s knitting! Usually, I come back from breaks in blogging having spent the time being occupied with everything but knitting. This time, it was different. Not only was there waving about of sticks and yarn in the last few weeks, there was a lot of frantic waving about of said sticks and yarn. All in pursuit of a single goal, to convert this silk and alpaca yumminess (I don’t think I have ever touched anything that felt so heavenly)


into twenty of following repeat


so as to form a lovely and warm scarf comme ça


for my future mother-in-law in time for her birthday and visit here in the first week of January. Well, that week has come and gone, along with future MIL without her scarf. Alas, even my best intentions and a few days of panic-stricken knitting during every spare minute were no match for my ability to procrastinate. Have I ever mentioned that I live in perpetual denial of deadlines? I only made it to repeat 17 on the last day she was in town. It actually took me until that day to finally accept that I was not going to be able to knit the remaining three twenty-row repeats, block each half of the scarf (it’s knit in two halves for aesthetics), and graft the two halves together, all in less than four hours. Oh if one only had a switch to pause time. Or a magic wand to transform a pattern complex enough to require an eye on the chart but utterly boring after the third rendition into something absolutely simple but riveting. And while I'm wishing, I'd like a pony and world peace too.
Fortunately, the extremely mild winter so far this year on the East Coast where future MIL resides has bought me a bit more time in getting the scarf done before she would need it. (That is, if the current disturbing climate trend of warmth enough for cherry blossoms in January is not some permanent sigh of global warming, in which case she may never need a scarf again.) In any event, some devoted knitting time this weekend has finally brought me to the tail end of the knitting. I’m so happy to be finally done with these seemingly never ending repeats. Now there's naught but blocking and grafting ahead. Hurrah!