Spring Fever

I've got the worst case of startitis. Making myself even crazier than usual. I've spent hours and hours this past week browsing ravelry and my extensive magazine collection. (Side note -- hey! Did you know you can log your magazines on ravelry now? I've already logged two out of my nine boxes of magazines and have added patterns from them to my favorites list. Love it!)

So, to begin at the beginning of my almost crippling case of startitis, one week ago tonight I was struck with a wicked urge to start something new. Never mind that I have lots of great projects already OTN. I finished something on Monday, and therefore my crazy knitter gene went into overdrive on Tuesday.

I spent most of the afternoon staring longingly at a couple of bags of yarn clearly visible from my desk. They're stashed behind a piece of furniture, so you can't see them from almost anywhere in the room except my desk.

I stared at pink yarn for a bohus.

Silvery blue yarn for the Mendocino cardigan by Alice Starmore.

Shetland yarn for the Fair Isle cardigan by Veronik Avery.

Stared and stared.

By 7 p.m., I was ripping apart my bookshelves in a quest for patterns. I think if I could have found the bohus pattern, it would have been on the needles. Took me two hours to find the copy I made of Mendocino, and by that time, to be candid, I was overwhelmed by the urge to cast on every single pattern in my collection. I was almost paralyzed by it.

I decided to stall and keep working on the OTN patterns for a little while longer. I knit a few rounds of the lace blouse, a few inches of a ribbed sock leg, and a few more rows of St. Brigid. The more I knit, the more the urge to start something new faded. I saw this as a good thing.

Then two funny things happened. Two people did something unexpectedly nice for me over the weekend. Without getting into detail, one involves someone who really helped my family in a way I'll never forget. My family has been in turmoil for months, and this woman -- who knows nobody in my family except me -- has blown me away with her kindness and generosity.

She needs a white hat. Good guys always wear white hats, right? So back I went to the startitis frenzy, until I found this gem of a pattern in ravelry. I already have the right yarn in my stash, and so this will get cast on as soon as I can locate the yarn. It's here somewhere! But seriously, how adorable is this hat?