Where there's a wool...

I've knitted about 4 inches of my scarf so far, and that's really honestly true, not just some kind of tangled metaphor for the progress of the year so far. Though it might be that as well, if you like. I haven't knitted every day, but, you know, the sky doesn't fall in if you drop a stitch. Not that I'd actually know how to pick up a stitch if I dropped one in the real knitting, mind. I'd probably just cry.

This probably sounds like pitiful progress to those of you who dash off a jumper or two in your lunchbreak, but I'm enjoying it. The most knitting I've done in one go was while watching the DVD of To Kill A Mockingbird the other week with addedentry, who smiled patiently as I went all weak-kneed at the sight of Gregory Peck pushing his glasses up onto his forehead. I had to stop, though -- knitting, I mean, not going weak-kneed -- because the wool was rubbing my finger raw. It was the finger next to the one where I wore the woven wood-coloured ring that addedentry bought me at the Folk Festival last year, but I lost that a week ago while folding clothes. It's probably folded into a sock or something and will jump out and surprise me one day like a spider under a washing-basket.

Sometimes I feel as though I'm knitting everything around me into the scarf; the smoke of roasted coriander seeds, and the fug of menthol and tissue-dust that surrounds me when I have a cold, and the music with its melodic lines interweaving like yarn, and Owen's clear voice as he reads a poem aloud, and wayward thoughts which are tugged in from the sides like a French pleat, and then all the tension I'm storing up from work goes into keeping that strand of red-sky-at-night-coloured wool just taut enough against my left index finger.

Thoughts and good wishes go to nja and vinaigrettegirl who are dealing with difficult endings and beginnings, respectively. Both of you bring calm and wisdom into my life; may your knots resolve into a pattern.