Actually, I take it back. I do have more to say.

I've been thinking lately about what I knit when - lately, I've been on a real scarf kick. I like knitting scarves, particularly ones where I can memorize the stitch pattern and then just sit down and motor on them. I like them because there's no shaping to worry about, the only measurements you have to do is "how wide" when you cast on and "how long" when you decide to cast off.

I started both the Tilling the Soil vest and the Song of Hiawatha shawl earlier this fall and haven't touched them much recently, especially the lace shawl.

I think my knitting reflects the state of my everyday life. When I'm on break, or coming off of break, or at a time early in semester where I'm not so busy, and not so frazzled, I get ambitious and start complex projects. Then, the season drags on, my ambition gets sucked away, and I'm happy to get in a few rows of plain stockinette or a knit-purl pattern that's easy enough to detect mistakes in as I'm making them.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I love complex knitting. It's just, these days I've not had the energy to do much of complexity when I come home. My days are just packed - I get in here around 7 most mornings, work usually until 3 or 4 or 5, seem to have at least one evening meeting (on top of Youth Group) per week - and so when I'm home, I'm exhausted. And that doesn't even begin with the weekends of grading or prep or running the errands I would have preferred to have run during the week. Everyone is exhausted. Everyone on campus is teaching overloads, it seems, this semester, and everyone is dealing with a New Generation that is, shall we say, more needy than previous generations.

So when I come home, I like being able to pick up a scarf that's either all garter stitch shortrowed (my new favorite pattern, the multidirectional diagonal scarf or some other kind of simple, easily remembered pattern. (I have also started the Shape It! scarf from the Sally Melville book out of some Cartoon from my stash).

I'm the same way with socks. For every single sock of twisted-stitch knitting I get done (and yes, the Canal du Midi socks are STILL on the needles over a year later; they are probably a Christmas-break project now), I get several pairs of the dead-simple self-patterning yarn or variegated yarn socks.

I don't know. I don't know whether to give in and embrace the fact that I am Primarily A Simple Knitter, or to fight it and force myself to do at least one row of lace or cables or something with shaping, rather than to sink into my big chair at the end of the day, say a little prayer for having been brought safe through another one, and then pick up the scarf I'm making. I do know I have more scarves now than any person should realistically have, especially someone living in a warm climate.

And yet, the last time I was at the Hobby Lobby, I desperately grabbed up the balls of Landscapes in the pinkish color for a mistake-rib scarf - and would have grabbed up the balls of Zing, if they had had enough in the color I wanted for the simple stole pattern - never mind that pink matches well with no coat I own, and I have absolutely nowhere to go that wearing a fake fur stole doesn't look massively costumey and pretentious. And never mind that I have a stash full of yarns, mostly earmarked for sweaters or complex shawls.

So I don't know. I do know when I get aquisitive - when it's like all the yarns or books or fabric in the world is on a sinking ship, and I have to "save" what I want RIGHT NOW or I will never have the chance again - that it's a symptom of stress. I guess I need to rein in what I buy - not so much for the cost-factor (I'm doing OK, the bills are all paid, the Christmas presents are all bought) but for the fact that I've probably got more yarn now than I will knit up, realistically, in what time remains to me here on this Earth. Could it be some kind of mental bargaining tool? Some kind of weird twisted logic where I think when the Angel of Death comes for me, I can turn to him (her?) and say "Oh, I can't possibly go now, look at all I have to do yet"? Or is it more a promise to myself, that I will someday have the time to make all these things, and I will someday have a place to wear all these things, or will someday have people in my life to give all these things to?

I suppose, if you look at it in a cold-eyed sort of way, buying yarn as a stress-response isn't that bad. I'm not going into debt - true, I may be holding off on getting a DVD player, or a new phone, or something else I might spend my disposable income on. I'm not using ingested substances as a way of quieting the qualms. I'm not, what is the best euphemism here, getting involved with people whom I will hurt later or who will hurt me...

I don't know. But I look at the Song of Hiawatha shawl - currently stalled at the point where I begin the Pukwana of the Peace Pipe (a feather and fan type of pattern) and I look at my squishy spongy funky Mosaic scarf, and I wind up working on that instead. And I feel sort of bad.