Hitting the wall

Since the Oxfam knit thing, I seem to have totally lost my knitting mojo. Not blaming Oxfam, you understand - it just coincided with it. We were asked to produce 9" squares -  that would have been fine if I'd been there all day, but we didn't get there until after lunch. I started a knitted square, in bamboo stitch - since ditched in the great insecticide nightmare - but it was taking forever. I should have followed Wendy G's lead, and made a square in treble treble crochets. I then decided to cheat somewhat - I had some 6" squares for Feed the Children, and I added a few rounds of border in crochet, and that did the trick.

I seem to have a lack of focus at the moment. Two of my projects are complex cables or lace, can't seem to get sat down with a quiet hour to spare to get past the preliminary decreases/increases on the cabled top. I think I need a project that is either acres of stocking stitch, or simple crochet, to get my mojo back. I don't think I've over-reached myself - just that my mind is super-busy and requires something simple to relax with. I guess I could resurrect the Rowan bamboo top - I stalled on that, because it seemed massive, and this is because I need to lose some weight, and it seemed pointless to knit an already oversize top if it would later drown me.

It was far too hot to knit much in Rhodes, and I didn't get much done, as I detailed in a previous post.

I've a hankering to start the Noro silk garden skirt, currently sitting at 0% on my progress bar - I only loaded it because I wanted to put a picture with it on Ravelry. Can you believe, I seem to have picked a skirt nobody else wanted to make? Alas, the pattern calls for 110 sts in a chain cast on - I presume they mean a provisional cast on - so I am deciding how it is I shall do that. I'm hoping I can borrow a 5mm crochet hook tonight and start like that.

I've been helping Wendy G out with crochet - she's learning to read the patterns, but keeps picking patterns with typos in. It's amazing how one word extra, or one missing round, can make such a difference. I'm beginning to think that the pattern publishers (and we're talking respected names, here!) never bother to try work from their own patterns, at least where crochet is concerned. Crochet is harder to document, because you can stick your hook in a number of places, and easily gain or lose stitches by design or by mistake. Not so with knitting - barring dropped stitches, all the stitches you should have are live on your needle, so you should be able to figure out where you are at any point.

I seem to be far more in a crochet mood than knitting - I feel I want to work on something, but it's got to be fairly simple and fast-growing. I feel as if I've been running along for ages quite happily, and have suddenly run off the edge of a cliff. I don't want to lose my momentum, for fear (shudder) I might decide to give up handicrafts all together, in favour of vegetating in front of the tv. I'm not moaning, you understand - I'm just trying to figure out what has changed, to make me stop short like this.

Sigh. I think I'm missing working on my Kauni!

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Today it transpires a course I want to take on Monday eves is undersubscribed - unless I can squeeze onto the (full) Wednesday one (which neatly mucks up the Cov Knit Wits night I run for 8 weeks) or hang on for a fortnight to see if five more students enrol (unlikely), it's not happening. Or I can try again in January. Bloody gubmint and their withdrawal of subsidies for "leisure" courses. So I am legally obliged to pay for these courses (via council tax), but can in no way attend them. Yes, it sucketh mightily.

And this is almost a repeat of what happened when I was half way through the machine knitting course. History has the burps, and it's not at all funny. *grump*