What I Have To Say

may surprise some of you, shock others, and have some of you rolling your eyes and thinking, "There she goes again."

But before I get to that, let me thank Leslie, Ruth, Sus, and Lou for commenting on my post yesterday. In the three years I've been blogging, I'd never gone so long without a post receiving a single comment, yet in my last seven posts, I'd only received one comment. Ironically enough, it was just to say, "No comment." I'd begun to feel just a little bit deserted. Thank you for sticking with me, even through the down times.

And now, back to today's regularly scheduled post...

What I have to say may surprise some of you, shock others, and have some of you rolling your eyes and thinking, "There she goes again."

So what is this surprising, shocking, eye roll inducing news? Just this...I frogged the Mystic Waters last night. Every last bit of it. Down to the very last tangled bit of yarn. I cast on again and started over. I finished Chart A today, and have started Chart B.

So why did I rip it out, just to start it right back over? A couple of reasons--neither of which was the mistake I mentioned finding. One, I just wasn't feeling any continuity between what I'd knitted before and what I was knitting now. Everything seemed disjointed. Like it just wasn't right. So I started over, hoping to attain more of a rhythm. A flow. A connection, if you will.

Secondly, and probably more importantly, I'd started this shawl as a KAL* with a long time blogging friend. For reasons she never chose to explain, this person had suddenly decided to discontinue our friendship. No explanation, no goodbye, no nothing. She just unfriended me, both on Ravelry and on Facebook, and has stopped coming by the blog. It was soon after that that I set the shawl aside.

When I started working on it again, I was hoping to put this behind me, but I found I just couldn't. Picking the shawl up--knitting on it--every stitch became a painful reminder of this severed relationship. By ripping it and starting over, I was making this my project, instead of our project.

This is also a big factor in my melancholy of the last few days. The lack of comments was making me wonder if all my friends were deserting me. I'm glad to know that at least 4 of you are still out there!

To tell you the truth, I am pretty sure I know why she deserted me, even though she didn't have the decency to face me about it. It was over a difference of opinion. I do have strong opinions about certain things--politics, though I mostly keep them off my blog, and football--which is one of my main blog topics. I do hope all of you know that you can come here and disagree with me, provided you can discuss the topic in a rational, adult manner and not resort to name calling, trash talking, or personal attacking. Oh, and that you don't hide behind the anonymous label, because I won't take you seriously if you do that.

Posting anonymously is such a cowardly thing to do, don't you think?

*KAL--Knit A Long--an activity in which two or more people knit the same project at the same time.