knitting – ten days

I’ve been knitting to keep myself offline/from doomscrolling, and it’s working pretty well except, as with everything I ever do, I’ve overdone it and my hands would like me to stop that nonsense now please. At four rows a day, which is what I’m now limiting myself to, I’m probably not quite overdoing it, but I’m not going to finish this thing in thirty days, which had been my goal. I should probably embrace the idea that it’ll keep me offline longer if I keep working on it slowly and steadily.

I’m distressing my poor husband, though. I’m not a good knitter, and I do this awful horrible sharp inhaled gasp when something goes wrong, like a stitch falls off the needle. I hate it and I’m trying to stop doing it, but it’s a learned response (my mom did it) and it’s very hard NOT to do it. The answer, of course, is to never have any stitches slip off the needle and never make any other kinds of mistakes ever, which is obviously a super healthy and wise approach to everything.

Anyway, for the moment I’m making a large triangle, and am reluctant to put a name to its potential final form for fear of failure brought on by admitting I’m actually making something and losing interest, or something.

I think it’s actually much prettier than I can get the colors to turn out in the photos, but here’s my large triangle so far:

Please note:

People who knit keep offering me advice. This is a cross-platform problem.

Please stop. These posts do not contain questions. If I have questions, I’ll ask. I knew many people who are obviously eager to help. I appreciate those who have offered.

I do not knit well. If I do anything differently from the pattern, I’ll mess it up, so I do not find thoughtful suggestions by people who are good this at this and understand how to do it better to be helpful. I find them upsetting and angering, and if they continue I’ll have to stop posting these because the whole point is to be a hopefully-pleasant distraction during a difficult time. I know for a fact, because they’ve reached out to tell me, that these posts are helping some people, and it would suck to have to stop because upsetting ME defeats the whole point.

I also don’t want to explain what I’m doing, which would no doubt salve, and solve, the impulse for telling me what to do next, but I rarely finish knitting projects and while I didn’t intend or expect to create a mystery, the mystery is now part of the fun and to help keep me going. I enjoy the guesses, and don’t want to have turn comments off to keep people from being Helpy. Indeed, I’m far more likely to abandon the whole thing, which is presumably exactly the opposite of what helpful knitters are trying to accomplish. So just…don’t.