HAP-piness is knitting for its own sake

Ugh. Migraine

Here is one I made earlier:

WIP Wednesday, and I cannot show you most of what I have been knitting for the last few days. So, what can I share?

There has been a little turning of new leaf around here lately and I have been attempting to be busy and looking vaguely domestic in the mornings, keeping knitting until the pm. The idea is to be a little less sedentary and to be a lot less hard on my hands. I have the idea that I might also be less wrong-footed by unexpected visitors too – if there are no dust buffalo roaming the hall.

As plans go, it was a good one. Until yesterday afternoon, when I found myself on the wrong side of the office door to my knitting.

Having finished test knits for Violently Domestic, my plan, if you recall (except you might not, as I discovered last night when I was drafting this, that I forgot to press the publish button on Sunday!) (yes, we are in something of a time-space discontinuum here – bear with me and try to keep up – it’s Tuesday here for me but you won’t be seeing this until Wednesday so I am writing with that in mind…) was to dash off the remaining Joshaqan sock first. Well, I finished the second test knit on Monday night and I worked like  a beaver all Tuesday morning and then I was excluded from the office for the weekly telephone conference and… Joshaqan was on my desk.

I had no knitting  reward.

I was in need of emergency knitting!

I ferreted in a UFO pile (yes, I said “a” – that’s normal, isn’t it – multiple UFO heaps?) and came up triumphant – with my Hap shawl. The dogs and I went and sat quietly in the bedroom and I knitted garter stitch.

It was just what  I needed. No deadlines, no commitments, no targets at all and no little needles or charts. I just sat and knat (yes, made that one up.) Happily, mindlessly; enjoying the rhythm of the needles and the feel of the yarn in my hands. This shawl is being knit for no other purpose than to make a Hap. An end in itself.

I was having fun.

I’m up for a finish now.

I’d rather like to have this on show at the next Open Studio – the final one. Considering my original aim was to make it in time for the first one, it seems like a minor goal.

Joshaqan can wait.

More thinking about stuff followed on from the Sunday post that I forgot to post… and I had reluctantly decided to stop test knitting for a while and not to begin on the Romi Muse series, despite having sorted the yarn out. Tuesday’s joyful knitting experience suggests to me that I was right to reach that decision. It is time to return to knitting for fun and for myself.

Definitely no spinning group this week. I feel much happier for having made that decision too.