Yarn vs. Metal

I don't want to go to school.*

This worries me, because I love school. I get to play with fire and electricity and power tools, and I make stuff every day, so school lets me be creative and productive. This is a good thing, and until this week, I'd been enjoying it very much.

Some scary emotional stuff happened over the weekend that probably had something to do with my desire to ignore the world and stay home, but I think it's more of a knitting thing. I'm passionately, madly, obsessively in love with the Tangerine shawl. The first twelve inches were a brief fling two months ago, forgotten as soon as new projects caught my eye. I'd been telling myself I'd get back to it, and this weekend, I finally did.

The passion!

The lust!

The soft, smooth, brightfreakingorange beauty!

I have rediscovered my love for this shawl. It's a rectangle made in three sections: two borders and a center panel. Explaining how it goes together gives me a headache, so here's a diagram.



Yeah, even the diagram is a little confusing. Start at the bottom right, casting on for the border. Work the border as long as you want the shawl to be. Bind off all but one stitch. Pick up stitches along the edge of the border and add the one stitch to that. Work the center panel (which is only about 15 rows) perpendicular to the length of the shawl. End with a RS row, and, without binding off or breaking the yarn, cast on for the second border. Work the second border as the first, knitting the last stitch of each WS row together with a stitch from the center panel (which is still on the needle). Bind off, and add a crocheted picot edging to both ends.

This is why my sister says knitting is more difficult than Neurobiology.

Over the weekend I finished the first border, got through the center panel (had to frog about four rows of it because I'm an idiot when it comes to YOs after purls), and did a few repeats of the second border. So much progress! I want to maintain that momentum, but school gets in the way. The school only lets students miss a day every two weeks, and suggests that we afternoon students come in during the morning or night sessions to make up that time. I missed Monday, stayed for an hour last night, and will stay for as long as I can stay awake tonight to make up some time because the end of the semester is fast approaching and I need to get all my work done.

Maybe I can stay awake long enough tonight to get another few repeats finished. Maybe. The rest of the week should be easier because I'll only be at school until 6 instead of 10.

Stupid school, getting in the way of my knitting. Grr.


*School is a year-long welding program at a post-secondary trade school here in Connecticut. I'll graduate at the beginning of October, 2007.