Instigated

Knitalongs and Mason-Dixon are inextricably linked in my mind. I first signed up to Blogger so I could post to the M-D KAL blog. Since the ball-band dishcloths and linen hand towels, there have been the recent afghan-along, the Perfect Sweater, the mitered squares and the bubbly curtain, though I've never touched denim yarn.

Despite that, or maybe because of it, I had Knitalong in my hands last week and left it at the bookstore. I only looked at the first and last few pages and decided I already knew about knitalongs and who would publish a whole book about them anyway. Dismissed it out of hand. I didn't even see the patterns.

I should have expected the book to show up on Mason-Dixon. I left Kay's post with a new knitting necessity, the certainty that I needed to knit the pillow from Knitalong. Down the dusty roads and long ago I convinced the Master of my Division that a year of "Japanese Literature in Translation" fulfilled my Non-Western Civilization requirement. I had to read Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book for the course. There you are. Kismet. Without Kay, I would have missed it.

Yesterday, I set out for the book and the materials for the pillow. This time, I took a good look. In that twisty way things have, I found that the pillow was merely the goad, a way-sign, the project meant to pique my interest enough to get me to buy the book. Today I'm even more excited about the Barn Raising Quilt.

It's squares. It fills the small project niche that is perpetually empty and that I try to fill with sweater sleeves and fingerless mitts. It 's a new skill: increasing to knit flat on four needles.

Best of all it uses sock yarn.

Not enough for an afghan perhaps, but I have begun to wonder what I'm going to do with the stuff. No matter how often I've feebly tried to convince myself that "maybe, someday," it's not like I'm going to make, you know, actual socks.

I know what Marc can bring me back from England, though.