That royal baby alpaca/cashmere/silk yarn last night was called Epiphany, and this morning I had one.

Trying to get ready for Knit Night yesterday, I was between projects and dithering what to do next so I grabbed a longtime UFO out of the back of the line-up, figuring that would make me at least make a little progress on it before I went back to the baby knitting. It was done to this point, right?

No. It was not. Okay, where, then… Okay, found my place.

Needed to switch it from a junk-drawer-reject timeout needle and onto my good Holz and Steins.  I found myself squinting, and another knitter laughed when I said I remembered now: I wasn’t going to work on this laceweight again till I had a new glasses prescription.

But I (deliberately) hadn’t brought anything else, so I quietly plugged away at it–when I wasn’t being distracted by those skeins. (Dudes! Purlescence totally scooped Webs!)

The upshot is that it hit me this morning that I hadn’t made progress for a *year* on that thing, though I very much wanted it done, for a reason I hadn’t been able to quite clearly see before. There were things I’d learned since I’d started it, small improvements that could be–I think… If I swatch…

So I spent the day ripping back to zero, redesigning it, trying it out, liking it immensely, rewriting, counting, redoing, proofreading, counting counting counting.

And as I worked, I had that Epiphany yarn over at the shop dangling as future reward for when I actually, finally finish this. I’m glad I didn’t buy any: when you don’t own it yet, it doesn’t own you yet, either: it can’t jump in line, it can’t hog the needles, it can’t thwart my intentions to persevere with the squinty laceweight, it just has to wait its turn. Anticipation is a happy thing–and great incentive is too.

And the new shawl design is very very good. I am very very pleased. That long timeout, along with an hour and a half of not being quite pleased with it but not putting it down, helped me see it all with a new eye.  Getting it exactly right was so worth the wait.