How is it that the come-hither of new projects is most compelling just when it’s most critical that you finish what you’ve already begun? It should be a law, like Murphy’s. Sarah’s Law of Distractibility, maybe. Barring disaster (and we all know Disaster is skilled at the limbo and the high jump), the Mediterranean Ivy lace is going to be the most beautiful work I’ve ever done. But even the plain rounds take more than an hour at this point. When I was twelve or thirteen, there was a summer I spent with my friends Lizzie and Alice, nearly always in their swimming pool when we weren’t riding our horses through their woods and fields. We trained hard at underwater swimming, one end to the other and back again, hot blackness rising behind our eyes as we strained through the shallows to touch the wall and erupt gasping for oxygen. That’s what each lap of this stole feels like now: push a little further every time, right to the limit of punishment to the eyes and fingers. Five days left to knit, including all the time it’s going to take to crochet a single chain of edge loops.

So what led me to blow all of Saturday morning, the only crafting time I had that day, sewing an oven mitt? (And yes, I forgot to photograph it again when it was finished.)

Good question. It was for Mother’s Day. But that’s not much of an excuse. And still I itch to cast on six new projects. Fortunately, the knitting gods are keeping me on the straight and narrow: I discovered that I’d twisted the join in the Indigo Ripples skirt (which I never do), and that despite (or because of?) my math and swatching it was coming out six inches too large anyway.

1. Pull out all your quilt strips. It’s helpful if you didn’t put them away in perfect order last time.

2. Don’t look at the pictures you took before.

3. Lay out the strips more or less the way you remember them looking.

4. Make a few radical changes of the background strips.

5. Break out the scissors and start cutting. Don’t give yourself the chance to fuss.

6. Sew.

Then you can think about something else, like a) cutting up all the new fabric you just bought for your next quilt, or b) how nice the tulips that have survived the marauding puppy are looking:

I told you I couldn’t resist swatching all that sock yarn, once I had the idea to make a Confectionary Vest rather than a Confectionary Tank, remember?

I thought this stitch pattern might be a chore, with those extended-slipped-crossed stitches, but it turns out it’s addictive. (Hence my swatch is twice as tall as it needs to be.) I’m still playing with the arrangement of the colors, but it feels like painting, and it’s extraordinarily satisfying. Can you picture it as a vest, with some 2-color corrugated ribbing for trim? I think it might be just the thing for next fall.

I won’t start knitting it before then, unfortunately. I’m creeping up on the completion of my secret Shibui project, and the Ivy stole will be finished in ten days if I have to stay up nights to do it, but then it’s going to be full steam ahead with my secret Popknits project and the Indigo Ripples Skirt. I really should take a swing at finishing my three-year-old Frost Flowers pullover, and then there’s that bag of Cashcotton 4-Ply in the stash suddenly begging to be an Apres-Surf Hoodie. Not to mention all the babies hitting the ground in August and needing little sweaters for the fall. What’s a girl to do, especially when she’s got sewing projects tempting her, too? Resist buying yellow and white and gray and black fabric for this (thanks a lot, Alison) or this (it was the embroidered bicycles that sent me over the edge), for starters.

A week ago, Claudia threw down and announced a pledge to replace at least one car trip per week with a bicycle trip. That’s just the kind of challenge I can get excited about, since I have 1. a conscience, 2. a body that could use a little more exercise, and 3. a meager salary that doesn’t go far at the gas pump these days. She’s calling the effort Bicycles As Transportation / Knitters for Alternative Transportation: BAT/KAT. So Mondays are now BAT update days.

On Friday night, Mr. G and I pedaled down to our favorite theater for a $3 movie, pizza, and microbrew (we love Portland). Some Like It Hot was playing, and I’m happy to report that it’s still a delightful date movie 50 years after it was filmed. Saturday I rode to the yarn store to meet Katrin instead of driving, while Mr. G cycled to the annual giganticus tech-entrepreneur-geekfest known as Bar Camp. And yesterday we took the bikes when we went to meet Mr. G’s dad for dinner. That’s three BATs apiece: they’re all within two or three miles of home, exactly the range where we’d be most tempted to hop in the car, but the bike trip takes only a minute or two longer. We also walked for the groceries all week and took the MAX train when we went shopping for a purple tie for Mr. G to wear to my brother’s wedding. Since my job requires me to drive over 30 miles on weekdays (I carpool, but I still hold myself responsible for the environmental impact of the trip), I like to leave the car in the driveway all weekend whenever possible.

Now I feel like I need a marvy little sidebar BAT/KAT tally graphic. Too bad I don’t have skills like that.

And the knitting? The Ivy stole has crawled up to row 26 of the edge chart. I’m halfway there, except that the rounds are still getting longer. I don’t think I could conscionably use the word excruciating to describe knitting cashmere (hey, how has unconscionable survived in our lexicon but conscionable is obsolete? Add it to the list with words like wieldy and whelmed, I guess), but this edging is like the last 2.2 miles of a marathon. Why, Skacel, why can’t you make a #0 Addi LacePoint? What daft manager signed off on a plan to make #1s and #00s but nothing in between? I may have cast on an Indigo Ripples skirt for some much-needed stockinet on #5s.