a long time coming

I cast on for this shawl in the spring of 2007.  I was still teaching high school and my best friend had gotten married in April.  I asked if I could give her something blue, thinking making a lace shawl would be smooth enough, especially if I gave myself enough time; after all, I could whip up a crocheted scarf in an afternoon, why not a knit shawl in a few days?

Oh, how sadly, completely, startlingly wrong I was.  I'm far less naive, though I might imagine myself taking on something like this again in too short an amount of time.  It's a tendency of mine.

Now, I can prioritize knits.  I stay at home with the kids, I edit a poetry journal, I am fairly quiet.  But at the time, I was teaching high school, had just been budget cut from my first job, my own wedding was getting planned, and the musical I was co-directing was culminating.  It was a highly charged time for me.

So I made her a terrible crocheted thing that reminded me of a fishermen's net because it took me as long to cast on with the knit pattern I tried over and over again.  

And with the leftover yarn?  I gradually made this.  

It took so long because I've learned I have a strange swinging when it comes to making--sometimes I'll be intensely in a poetry groove and others, a fiber-ish groove.  

Perhaps this is why I like poems:  they are intense, small, fiddly creatures that require small edits and adjustments to make the largest of impacts.  I couldn't sustain the marathon of a novel.  Same, why I have more success making single pieces, little knit objects, the like.  I like fiddling.  

Mistakes, not so much, and this shawl is riddled with them, which is what happens any time you do something the first time and pick it up and drop it dozens of times over a number of years.

Fortunately, Kelly accepted this marriage gift with good humor, no matter she's been married over seven years now.