Philosophical Knitting

In a continuing effort to thwart the dark side, I will refrain from an up close examination of the intense suckage of this last weekend. For a light and airy synapses, please read the following sentences while humming “Singing in the Rain”

My mother-in-law passed away on Thursday. She had been going down hill and my husband and kids had tickets to fly out west to visit her before she died but she beat them to it. They left on Sunday and will return on Thursday.

My family is gone for three days and my house is very quiet. Quiet is a great thing for about 12 hours, after that, my knee-jerk existentialism kicks in. (Knee-jerk existentialists are a dangerous breed but very good to have at parties. They can be used as door stops or perhaps placed on all fours and used as an interesting coffee table.)

Existentialism is a deep dark hole and I am the white rabbit.

Therefore, I knit. (I knit, therefore, I am.)

The anti-inflammatory drug that I have been taking has worked quite well and my hands have allowed me to knit on my mosaic squares. After I took the family to the airport in Minneapolis yesterday, I wasted time knitting at a Starbucks as I waited for a yarn store in Excelsior to open. My goal for my mosaic squares is to finish eight a month so I can have 48 in 6 months. (I knew I learned those damn multiplication tables for something!)
I am now halfway through my eighth square and it is January 29th. This also includes taking a week off with sore hands.



I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up the pace, but 6 squares a month would also be ok. I’ll forgive myself for that…

I did manage to find some new colors of Cascade 220 at Coldwater Collaborative and I now have a healthy selection for making more squares. Every time I pull out the completed squares and look at them laid out, I am entranced. I think I will end up crocheting them all together with black but that is still to be determined.

One thing I have discovered is that the closer the two contrasting colors are, the simpler the mosaic motif needs to be. Complex motifs simply disappear. Funnily enough, when I first started looking at each pattern, I dismissed the really simple ones. (Who wants to go to the effort to knit a circle motif?) Now, after knitting the subtle blue circle motif, I think it is my favorite one.

I also thought the baby poop dark yellow yarn was slightly hideous when I bought it but I’m trying to work against my preconceived notions and just let the colors play out. Now that I’m halfway through the yellow square, I’m really enjoying it.

I think this is my favorite kind of knitting. It’s the reason why I like freeform knitting as well. The end is a surprise. There are no pictures that tell you how it will look; there are no directions to tell you how to get from point A to point B. There is just a skeleton and it is up to you to flesh it out.

Hmmm. Kind of like life.