sick in the head.

I ran through my to-do list like a wild thing this week, which turned out to be a brief spurt of mania brought on by an impending cold. It has settled in my head (the cold, not the mania) and now I’m too irritable to do much of anything but stare glumly at the internet and complain. Probably there wouldn’t have been a problem at all, and the little head cold would have drained quietly away, except that I went all the way to IKEA — it’s in another state and took nearly three hours of driving — and the changes in elevation changed the pressures in my sinus cavity and I went deaf in one ear, for a while. Not a good sign.

I am sitting in bed, sniffling and being resentful of everything in the world. (Still love IKEA though. I ate an apple tart and had Swedish berry juice to drink. It was delicious. I’m always very happy to eat there, since when we lived nearer to the store and had a house to fill up with inexpensive flat-packed furniture, I was vegan — and there was NOTHING to eat. Traumatizing. One needs a filling Swedish-type meal after testing and arguing about the relative merit of every single sofa in the place. I note that they have a small variety of vegetarian food available nowadays. Good work.)

The other thing I’m doing is procrastinating work on my December blanket. It’s plain garter stitch on Aran-weight yarn held double, and is in no way difficult or taxing. The first panel (it’s made in panels) went pretty well; I had to rip back six or seven times before I figured out the right gauge and length and width, and of course it ended up being what I had cast on originally, but all that was only a thousand yards or so of knitting and I wasn’t too fussed.

Now I’m in the long haul. I’m on my sixth consecutive square of brownish yarn, which is about 1800 yards, and technically it’s now two strands of white to each strand of brown but all I can think about is how freaking boring this is and what was I thinking and wouldn’t it be better to give up knitting entirely, like find a new hobby, because this is just … it’s just a lot of garter stitch.

And the self-imposed deadline is the Solstice (Dec. 21st) … but there’s a lot of mattress stitching to do before then … so really I have to finish on the 20th (better yet, the 19th) … and one cannot haul a half-completed blanket around very easily … so it’s all being done at home … and … and … and …

And my head hurts.

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