For the love of knitting...

I have a love/hate relationship with the fall. I love the cooler weather after a sticky, hot August but I know that the end to my summer freedom is just around the corner. I love to have to bring a cardigan with me wherever I go and, most importantly, I love that the knitting bug comes back. Each summer, I wonder if my disinterest in wool means my love affair with knitting is finally over, but when fall rolls around again, I am immediately drawn to my stash. On the other hand, with school starting up again, I've let the garden go and my cats look at me like I'm killing them a little each time I leave the house in the morning. The long list of home projects I'd planned to accomplish this summer snickers at me each time I walk past, knowing that all of the repainting/building/and organizing I didn't get to will have to wait for 10 more months.

But, there is the knitting.

The school year starts with faculty meetings. There are ups and downs to these meetings, and with the feisty bunch of colleagues I work with, there are usually some difficult and frustrating moments.

But, there is the knitting.

Megan always asks in late August: so, what are you bringing to knit? And I'm thankful for that reminder, because I'm not ever in the middle of a project in late August (Megan is one of those knitters who keeps working right through the summer, how does she do it?), so I need to plan ahead to be prepared for the first faculty meetings. I can't have a complicated pattern or any UFOs since they would bring frustration (more of which I don't need while sitting in a meeting) and I do have to be able to pay attention and be involved in discussions.

This spring, I purchased a skein of angora wool at the Kutztown festival. This little ball of wool (only 58 yards!) now has had me pondering the idea of getting an angora rabbit ever since (I'll be at the Endless Mountains Fiber Festival in a few weekends to scout out some information) because it is so darn perfect. It's a neutral brown (not dyed) and as soft as anything. Therefore, I knew that the project I used for this wool needed to be simple to allow the yarn to be the star, and small since I only have a bit of it. Immediately upon purchasing this skein, I knew that it would have to find a home wrapped around my neck, so when Megan's inquiry came, I started searching for a neckwarmer pattern.

And here I am in late August, knitting up a neckwarmer. I found this pattern, but have really improvised to the point that it's completely different (mostly because it calls for way more yardage than I have). I'll keep the idea of a bunch of interesting buttons, though. I actually knit it on the first faculty day, then frogged it and reknit it again on the second (I've had to keep making it thinner and thinner so that I'll have enough yarn to get it to wrap around my neck!), but it was the perfect project. It was good to not have a pattern so that a little bit of my imagination could run wild; and anyway, when you work with really fantastic wool who cares if you need to frog it? As I ripped it out, I got some silent nods of apology and regret from others in the meeting, "oh, too bad....and you'd been working so hard on it" they seemed to be saying. Little did they all know that I was really thinking: I get to knit this wool up again!

So, on one of my last days off before the kids come, I'm poking around in my button stash (thank goodness for giant button stashes), and thanking my lucky stars that yet another knitting project has helped me to maintain my sanity as another crazy school year begins. And to chronicle my knitting endeavors this year, I've finally joined Ravelry (get on the stick, Megan) and am having fun poking around on a new site.

Happy almost-fall, fellow knitters!