My Stonington shawl has been one of my Mindless Knitting projects. I usually only have a couple in progress with the rest of my WIPs being more intellectually stimulating.

Well, this weekend I finally finished my other simple project – the Angora Socks! Hurrah!!

I left you in suspense with my last blog entry and the analysis of what I thought was a small mathematical miscalculation.

I had to leave you in suspense because I was left speechless!!

It has taken a couple of days, and a scheduled dinner out with friends tonight, to shake me from my stupor. I have no viable mindless knitting! Yes, I could start something new but the Stonington Shawl “situation”, “mishap”, “disaster” ….. has completely knocked me out of the game. Seriously! It was a simple trapezoid but, NO, that was just too much for my math-challenging little mind. Suddenly I was back in school looking at yet another dismal grade on a math test.

I couldn’t find the will to start anything else until I had faced down my inner math demons! Well, if not face down, I could turn and run. Run and find a brand new shawl design that would be truly mindless.

And, ripping out the entire Stonington Shawl was wonderfully cathartic. I have cast on 8 stitches – using Emily Ocker’s circular cast-on and I am going to make a simple square shawl. With paired increases at four points on every other round, my square can be knit on circular needles going around and around and around.

Besides the obvious math problem, I didn’t like the way the Stonington Shawl looked with my beloved Bayou yarn. I thought about how much I liked the way the slipped stitch pattern on my Ric Rac Rib socks looked with the Imagination yarn. I did a little bit of stitch pattern research and decided that the Bee Stitch would fit my mindless criteria nicely and would make the most of the hand-dyed colors in my Bayou colorway.

I will use the Bee Stitch in the triangular sections between the paired increases. A simple bit of texture.

I can do this!

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