As I discovered this last week, the proverbial “start-itis” syndrome is not limited to knitting. On the contrary, it seems to be a hobby-wide problem.
Forget hobbies, it’s a lifestyle-wide issue! I’ve been having so many ideas for new projects that I feel like they’re shooting out of my ears and ricocheting wildly off the walls. Sweaters, socks, blog posts, Twitter, fairs… will someone please make me stop? Or just get a notebook out and write down the ideas. (Although there is a drawback with that. I’m the type of person who sees no gap between having an idea and acting upon it. To think is to do. Sitting on a notebook full of ideas is just plain irritating.) (Really.)
But, that’s what I’m having to do these days. I know it’s a good thing to think things over (and definitely pray about them before starting); I’m just having difficulty discerning what needs to happen because I want to discern it at my own pace. I want snap decisions. Paper handed down from God with “do such and such” written on it. But, obviously, that’s not the way I’m supposed to get instructions, otherwise I’d be getting it like that. So back to the notebook for me.
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This is a confession of guilt, so no laughing. At least, not for the first half second or so. Let me see if I can work myself up to this. Ahem.
While making my shawl I neglected to stop and count stitches when it told me to the first time.
Whew. There. I did it.
So, of course, the inevitable happened and, when I actually counted stitches at the second point, I was off. By about thirty stitches.
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So, yes, I did say I wasn’t going to buy any more fiber until I’d made a significant dent in what I already had. (And I can already hear you chuckling to yourself.) 
But, there are certain circumstances that are just plain not worth resisting. And in this case, it was because I had never heard of nor seen this particular kind of fiber before. Well, that, and because it was shiny.
This is called banana silk. It’s derived from the leaves of banana trees, so it’s a plant-based fiber, and you can see how shiny it is in the pictures. I’d heard of yarn that had banana fiber in it, but it had never registered in my noggin that that would mean there was banana spinning fiber floating around somewhere to be pounced on.
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A few days ago I began a new knitting project, since I had finished the sweater. “Wait!” you say. “You finished and you didn’t tell us?” Well, it’s not finished-finished until it’s blocked, and I’d rather not model it while it’s soaking wet, thank you very much. And pictures of it laying flat on a table get old after awhile.
Ahem. As I was saying. I began knitting my first shawl. The Emily Dickinson shawl, it is called, and it’s available for download on Ravelry. (I’m LoveFiber on there, by the way.) This is my first shawl, my first knitted cobweb lace-weight, and my first time adding beads to a knitted project.
And let me just say it now, knitters have things so easy where beads are concerned! You just pull the loop up through the beads one at a time with no fuss. The last beaded non-knitting project I made required loading the seed beads onto the yarn ahead of time. All hundred and something of them. Then I had to keep scooching them along the yarn until I needed one. Crazy.
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