Gifts, Grief, and Forward Progress

I came home to Madison the day after Mom's memorial service (which followed my sister in law's memorial service by a mere 6 weeks), stunned and sad. So overwhelming were the events of the summer, and really of the entire year, that I just needed to be home, and be quiet.

After a few days...or was it a week? Or was it two? I decided I would make a goal of beginning to knit again. I knew it would be good for me, but I just couldn't get interested. I slept a lot, wandered around the house, unpacked a few of Mom's things that I had brought home, packed a few of my own things to make room. Then came the night of the spinning guild meeting. I decided if I took knitting, I would indeed begin to knit. And I did.

Shortly after that, both of these small projects were done. They are the thank you gifts for our totally heroic neighbors who took care of our entire urban farm for many weeks this year, often for indefinite amounts of time, sometimes without notice. So; the neck warmer is for Karen, and the scarf is for Tony. Many thanks to Amy for the fabulous roving that made that lovely purple heathered yarn!

And then what should be next for me? Well. Some time ago I had worked on coming up with a swatch of a merino-alpaca blend that I could make a next-to-the-skin sweater from. The best (and truly excellent) swatch was one ply white merino, one ply grey alpaca. I figured that in my quest to do one normal thing every day, I'd try spinning again now that I was knitting.
So I got out the swatch, and started spinning.
Wow, this felt like really really slow going!! But finally today I'm ready to ply, and then I can see if my memory was correct about how I spun the original sample.

And here's the plan; the Sandy Cardigan from Big Girl Knits. It might take me a year to spin the stuff at the rate I'm going, but it'll be soft and nice when its done. Now you know why my swatch is in garter stitch...am I totally nuts to consider not only spinning the wool for this, then dying it, but then also knitting a whole huge big-girl sweater in garter stitch?? If you feel that this might well be my undoing, please let me know now! My sanity is shaky enough! On the other hand, if you think a little spin-a-thon, a dyeing project in many colors, and a long meditative single-stitch project is just the thing, well...don't hold back. Let me know I'm on the right track and won't go down in a pile of whimpering boredom. I'm actually hoping that the complex shaping of this sweater (mostly in the side panels) and the fact that there are both a solid and a multicolored yarn will break up the boredom sufficiently. Possibly delusional...