expect an upswing in blog posts

in volume, if not quality.

I am giving up knitting for lent.

I know, it's unbelievable, isn't it? Recently I have been rather productive in the knitting area - mittens, hats, a nice triangular shawl...but also a little obsessive. The other night, I was blasting away on row after row, and it was gorgeous and fast and worthwhile and not fiddley at all, and it occurred to me that if I wanted a challenging practice, I could give up knitting for Lent.

I laughed out loud when I thought that, but I also had kind of a sinking feeling. I have begun to suspect that maybe I think/read/sketch/work on my knitting a little too much, maybe at the expense of other things...like attention to Eric and Ian. Like sometimes, my knitting is a way of disengaging. I don't see it as a terribly unhealthy way, and I think it's good to have interests that are just mine, involving neither work nor Eric's work nor The Backyadigans.

But I'm giving up knitting for 40 days for the same reason I gave up blogging last year - because I love it, because I already miss it...in fact it feels a little tragic (melodramatic? Moi?) and I feel a little nervous, like whatever will I do with myself? Or like I'm putting a beloved pet in a kennel for a month. I've been feeling wistful ever since I decided.

(Why, yes, I am a very unusual person. How nice of you to notice.)

Anyway, before I go to bed tonight, I'm actually going to stash my stash in the sewing room. I usually keep a couple of projects, in baskets and cache pots, out where I can admire them, or pick them up and work a few rows while plastic dinosaurs maraud around the carpet. Tonight at the library, I intentionally didn't take out or renew any pattern books.

Seriously, this is going to be hard. That's why I'm doing it.