An old story

I feel as if I've written this post many times before. It's the post about the distracted knitter. Any readers who knit know this story well. It's the one about the constant distraction of new and exciting knitting projects - even when you are surrounded by pieces of unfinished knitting that were equally exciting and glittery in their early stages.

I have some much-anticipated knitting time this weekend. I should be blocking my version of Stephen West's Daybreak shawl that I cast off earlier in the week:



Or I should be knitting the bands on the Playful Stripes cardigan that I began for the dotee ages ago:



Much as I like this pattern, avoiding this task is understandable - I have to finish the picot hems and darn in all those stripey ends before I can begin the front bands. And anyway, this winter has passed and the urgency for finishing has disappeared.

Perhaps I should be working on the tea cosy - a gift for an old friend - that I began with energy some weeks ago. But it's languishing half-finished:



You all know the end of this story. I'm doing none of these worthy and worthwhile things. I've started (yet another) shawl - 'Dawn' from the oh-so-seductive pattern book 'The Fine Line' by Grace Anna Farrow:



The shawls in this book require only the most straight-forward knitting skills - feather-and-fan is about as complicated as the knitting gets. They rely on arrangements of stripes, often on the bias, and on the beautiful soft colours of Isager fine yarn. For me the real temptation of this knitting is the yarn. It's slightly sticky and creates a light, soft, drapey fabric. And the colours...

I'm hoping nothing new and glitzy will distract me from finishing this project - though the endless lengths of i-cord that finish the shawl might slow me down a bit.