Matsuri.My knitting mojo...it comes and goes. Some are surprised to learn I knit in the summer. Truth is, if the mojo is, then I am knitting. (I will take a break for sweaty hands...don't want the fiber going wonky from dampness :-)
I felt the mojo starting to stir a couple of days ago and my thoughts went immediately to this yarn. It's a Noro yarn called Matsuri (which means 'festival' in Japanese). It's 87% cotton, 13% wool.
I bought some for the first time at Modern Yarn, completely drawn in by the color (a green and purple mix). I knit Karen a birthday scarf with it a few years ago.
A couple of months later, I bought 10 balls in a different color from Little Knits where I spotted it on sale for 50% off. I envisioned a lightweight, warm weather lap blanket for Gem.
The yarn has been hibernating for a long time, but as my mojo began to stretch and rub its eyes open, I thought of the Matsuri.
Last night I dug through my two knitting baskets which contained three projects on-the-needles and one project that needs to be blocked:
• Brian's socks
• Hypoteneuse Wrap
• the antique rose shawl
• Simple Yet Effective Shawl
I decided to keep those around (the antique rose shawl is frogged, the yarn in a big ball waiting to be cast on again to correct a mistake I decided was too big to ignore). I organized my needles (Melody gave me a cloth needle organizer back on my birthday :-). I went into the stash and retrieved the Matsuri. I pulled the Simply Noro book off the knitting book shelf.
Then, I couldn't find my stitch counter. Or the red silk purse it's usually kept in (a birthday gift from Cara a few years back). I felt a familiar frustration start to well up. (A lifetime of disorganization = losing important stuff and/or not being able to find what you need when you need it.)
I was distracted and flustered, but and spent a bit of time searching desperately and irrationally.
But, the intensity of my emotional reaction didn't overtake me. I've been experiencing more success in getting organized in the last few months than I have in years. So I calmed myself as my environment calmed me, as I sat bewildered and a little sad, I was sitting on a freshly vacuumed (post-birthday party) carpet, surrounded by surfaces so relatively uncluttered...and the knitting morass I was dealing with was very much contained in two baskets.
And I went through everything in the baskets again. And I found it, in the deepest of bags which happened to be lined in black cotton making it very dark inside during a night time search.
And I was glad.
This morning I started my new project. I'm knitting a Cavendish blanket in the Matsuri for Gem. He doesn't know yet. Interesting, the difference between mojo and inspiration. Though it's been years since I purchased this yarn, my original intention, now years old, has not changed.
