Twenty rows on the bottom edging, not 13, 13 was the number of edge stitches. Darn. Of course. Fourteen done now, six to go.

Those long rows are giving me a little more time to plan the next one in my head as well as on paper.

I had had a particular yarn all set to go for the next project, but…

I finally messaged my little sister. I told her I had asked Mom her take on it and that she’d thought the same way I had, that Anne has all the pictures she could ever want in her house and with my turn to give to her next Christmas, I should knit her a monochrome afghan to play as quiet backdrop to all her gorgeous watercolors.

And I sent her a picture of the yarn that it was purportedly going to be made from, making clear that that was an offer, not a requirement.

By this time my siblings are on to me: Carolyn got her picture of her house right down to the tire swing with the scuffed grass below it, the one that started all this, Morgan got the moose and the river and forest and strawberry farm from our childhood memories.

I want one with a story! she texted back.

She wanted me to give it my all like I had with them. She was really hoping for a picture, too.

Part of me felt a near-giddy sense of having been set free. Intarsia is where my knitting soul is right now. But also–a story? Which story, out of a lifetime? How on earth do you choose?

And so my brain has been (mostly) glad to have all those long tedious seed stitch rows in order to leave it rummaging through its drawers these past two days. I poked around on Ravelry this afternoon to see if there were any already-invented wheels on some ideas.

Ooh, look at… And… I could tweak… Yeah….!

Now to make them all come out to scale to each other and to the afghan’s overall size. And how much of that green did I use up last time. Okay then. Let me just finish this last little tiny bit….