Friday, September 14, 2012

WIP: Spruce Forest; Life

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I am not a neat person. I never really have been.  I have a lot of clothes, a lot of yarn, and a lot of ideas, and sometimes this translates into a messy apartment - and most of the time, that chaos doesn't end up on this blog.  I have mixed feelings about this, because nobody wants to see outright filth, but sometimes I wonder how honest it is.  Because the truth is, although I like to share what I'm working on with a perfectly neutral background, the clutter is both a reality and a big part of my working process.

So the exception is that I go on weird cleaning benders when I'm stressed out, which happened a lot in the first few months we lived here - but lately the apartment has stayed more cluttered than clean.  The reasons are complicated, but the short story is this: I've been struggling with fits and starts of depression for the last year or so, and two things have improved that situation greatly in the last few weeks.  First, is that I've been working really hard at school, and I am a much happier person when I'm busy.  Second is that I finally went to my doctor to get a medication changed, and after a bit of a rocky start, the results have been like... well, like I have a brand new shiny lease on life.  Yay.

So because I've been busy at school, I haven't been knitting as much.  But yesterday I went to my local yarn shop and sat and knit on Spruce Forest for a few hours, and it was glorious.

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I finished the body and started picking up stitches for the edging yesterday, so it's looking a little like a big knitted bag right now.  Nancy Bush's instructions are wonderfully detailed, so there's no guesswork when I just want to knit and not think about how to do a particular technique.  I'm going to be a little sad when the shawl is done, because it has been such a pleasure to knit - the yarn, pattern, and resulting fabric have combined to make a near-perfect experience that exists so rarely in a knitter's life.

Well okay, maybe I won't be too sad, because the only thing better than knitting a kickass shawl is wearing a kickass shawl!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That green yarn...Omigosh it's lovely, can you tell me about it?

Cory Ellen Boberg said...

It's MadTosh Sport, in the colorway Jade. I am so obsessed with Jade - I also have some in Prairie!

Erin said...

I've also been rather madly cleaning and organizing my space before Fall quarter begins. I live in a chaos-filled space where the chaos stems from having a family and a crotchety cat. It's hard to keep cleaning momentum going when it's so quickly undone.