Brain vacation

Here's what I've been working on lately:

• Working with a magazine editor to proof and revise one of my patterns. Said pattern involves proofing charts.
• Getting another pattern ready for self-publication, so more detail-oriented final proofing. It also includes charts.
• Working on a new design, which is fiddly, multi-coloured, and requires the creation and testing of - you guessed it - lots of charts.

Don't get me wrong, I love and am really excited about each of these patterns...but I think the combination of working on all three in the same week may have blown a gasket in my brain. Because, early this past weekend, I decided that if I didn't start knitting on something simple and brainless, with NO CHARTS WHATSOEVER, I might explode. :) Enter Pat, a knitter who messaged me on Ravelry last week, asking about my purple and black log cabin blanket WIP. (She wanted to know how I achieved its look.) Do you remember it? It's this one:

Pat's inquiry came in a few days before the moment where I realised I really needed some mindless knitting, which was very lucky, because it reminded me that I had something fantastically mindless all waiting to be picked up again. Perfect! So many thanks to her. I've been working on it intermittently all weekend. I don't have a new progress photo for you, because this thing is now so large that it takes a ton of work before you can actually see any progress. But it is certainly coming along. My plan is basically to knit until either I run out of yarn, or the thing is about 9 feet square. Whichever comes first.

I took it to my parents' last night to work on during our usual after-dinner chat, and my brother wanted to know if he could have it when I'm done, because he needs a blanket for his living room. (For when he falls asleep on the couch, I guess.) I told him no, this blanket is for us, to stash in the trunk of the car for emergencies, and it wouldn't match his living room decor, anyway. (He recently bought his first place and decorated it, and it turns out that he has amazing taste and a real knack for putting a look together. I wasn't too surprised at this, since he's always been that way about his clothing, but that doesn't stop me from gushing about how awesome everything looks whenever I visit him. My house has no look, it's pathetic.) However, it occurred to me that if I made him a log cabin in the "Moderne" style, like this one (and in very similar colours, too), it would match his living room decor absolutely PERFECTLY. He got really enthused. I told him it would take forever. He didn't care. Okay then! I think I may have Christmas 2011 solved for him!

Unfortunately, today, I am back to working on the fiddly new design, for the pure and simple reason that the log cabin blanket doesn't fit into my bag. :( Oh, well. Sorry brain, back to work for you. It is Monday, after all.