Recently I’ve been a little flighty with my knitting. Having Abigail and Elliot here has meant that knitting happens in little bits and pieces, a row here, a row there -our crazy sleep (or not sleep) schedules made for times that were well suited to bashing out little accessories of a newborn nature, little hats, long baby socks, stuff like that. I had plans though – mostly for baby stuff and socks.

I even had this big idea that I’d keep my advent knitting going – I got the advent socks from Cozy Knitter this last season. It was 24 stripes all leading up to Christmas and it was so lovely and peaceful to get up each morning and knit my two stripes (one on each sock) while I had my coffee and planned my day. I thought to myself that I would very much like to be the sort of person who gets up each day and begins with a small bit of sock. I imagined it being meditative and lovely and a really good way to get 12 pairs of socks in a year. I told myself I’d try it for this year, but really I meant for the rest of my life.

I have fantasies like this all the time. “I shall knit sixteen rounds of sock each morning so long as I live” is right up there with “Henceforth I shall dust everything weekly” or “From this day on I will always make my bed” or “I will have an empty inbox at the end of each work day”. Lovely habits that seem like they’ll make me into a really impressive person but never really seem to work out. Still, the sock thing seemed reasonable and honestly I’m more likely to meet a knitting goal than a cleaning one, so I decided to give it a go.

I wound my yarn, got out two sets of DPNs (even though I was going to knit two socks at the same time I would rather lick a cat than use two circulars) and got totally ready to ring in the new year with my new meditative and inspirational daily sock practice. Enter Abigail, and suddenly the whole thing seemed impossible and I was immediately reduced to watching each day zoom by as I thought “Holy cats where did that one go and have you seen those socks?”

Since that baby turned up I have in total managed about 5 days worth of daily sock knitting and the socks aren’t even equal. Every day I think that I’ve got to get it together and get back on track and I sort of vow that I’ll catch up and make it happen before the end of January and well. I thought it might happen once there was a little more knitting time.

So today I woke up, and there is more knitting time. Quite a bit more, actually and I was so incredibly happy about it, and I spent about a half hour working on all the other stuff that’s fallen off the rails over the last 23 days (and not knitting) while planning the amazing blog post that I was going to write to you today, about how I was going to spend the next year being this amazing person who did this cool sock thing. I even had it all tied into what today is – which is the nineteenth anniversary of this blog. (I know, I can’t believe it either.) I was pretty sure that by the time I got to my desk to blog I’d have the socks caught up.

Then two things happened. First, I had rather more work to do than I thought, then I had to go to the dentist (which is not celebratory at all but good oral hygiene is important) and then I had to do the groceries and then Meg texted and then I realized I never put in that laundry and then … then just a few minutes ago, something amazing happened.

I picked up my socks to work on them (I was going to knit several inches on them in ten minutes, as one does) and then I was overcome completely by a case of startitis so bad that I actually went to the stashroom, got two sweaters worth of yarn down from a cubby, and then shot off an email to arrange buying another sweaters worth. I was helpless. (They’re not even baby sweaters which would at least make some sense. They’re for me.)

I got out the ballwinder and swift and started rooting around for the pattern and then stopped and realized that I was in the process of wrecking my perfect blog post about my amazing sock thing, and I tried to make myself pick up those socks, and then I realized that it was okay. I still had a blog post, and I actually had a way better point.

There is absolutely nobody in my life that I can call and explain this bout of startitis to.* There’s nobody who wants to hear that I was helpless in the face of a nice DK, that I don’t knit socks on two circulars because I find DPNs more satisfying. That after a lifetime of knitting the idea of a new sweater still makes my heart skip a beat. That the words “self striping yoke” are enchanting. That I think I’ll finish socks without actually knitting them – These are not gripping ideas outside of this space – and regular people aren’t going to understand that this amazing sock plan is GARBAGE NOW, BECAUSE I AM GOING TO KNIT A SWEATER I DON’T NEED IMMEDIATELY.

I can say it here though, and know that you won’t just read it, you’ll understand it. You’ll maybe leave a comment telling me about when it happened to you. That you love self striping things, that the way that I feel about DPNS, that’s how you feel about circulars, and while we may continue to be poorly understood as artists in general, here we walk among our own kind.

I am simply understood in this space, and I feel normal here, and for nineteen years it has felt more like a home than a writing thing, and I can’t thank you enough for making that always true for me. No matter how negligent or sporadic my posts. I’m going to go knit a sweater now. Maybe I’ll love the sock thing tomorrow. I’ll let you know.

*This is a lie. There are absolutely people I can call and tell that too, but you know who they are? They’re some of you. We’ve been doing this long enough that most of my oldest and dearest friends… they’re you.

** Also, today is the day that it’s traditional to kick off my Bike Rally fundraising, and this year is no different. Also, it’s traditional to freak out the accounting people over there by making those donations in an amount equal to my years of blogging. If you’d like to keep the weird going and you are inclined and able, you can make a $19 donation here.