I hung a single hank of the red yarn out to hurry up and finish drying in the sun yesterday, mindful of the scrub jay years ago that had tried to abscond with an entire pound of blue baby alpaca, standing on it and yanking yanking yanking away while doing what birds do to lighten the load just before taking flight.

I washed it out immediately. It knitted up into a heathered effect that could never be reproduced. Well poop.

So. I wound the red hank. There was a knot, which was a disappointment, and I broke it there and started a second ball so that it wouldn’t catch me by surprise later mid-row.

The two balls turned out nearly exactly the same size. That knot did me a favor. Cool. I wanted to immediately start knitting.

But there were four balls plus a pull-through strand of green and I was just about to add seven of white and two balls of red into the chaos, and I made myself stop and take the time to wind those two reds into one ball together since I was going to be knitting them together anyway.

In the end I only had time to knit a single row on the afghan last night.

Also the most finagle-y one as I counted and counted again and again to make sure I was getting the intarsia set up right.

Yesterday at the dermatologist’s she really zapped a mole on my chest after I said there will be more heart monitors in my life and that thing’s in the way.

Today I was pushing myself: Colourmart got that replacement color to me super fast, I really want to be working on that afghan, I know it feels so great when I do, why am I letting myself be distracted away. I couldn’t for over a week and now I can. So go do.

I found my motivation–the sudden thought that, I am the only person who can do this. Meaning, with this specific love, intent, needle-to-yarn gauge, vision for it, sisterhood. I am the only person who can make what this is supposed to be and mean. My cousin-in-law’s abrupt passing last week reminded that we have no promises of extra time.

It is slow going now that I’m in an intense section again. My barn graph is twelve sets of five rows.

Six are now done. 10%. And it looks glorious already. I think I should add more flowers.