A case of startitis

Startitis is defined, more or less, as a condition wherein one achieves a sense of euphoria by beginning a new project. The longer the condition persists, the more projects metamorphose into UFO's (UnFinished Objects), which can languish indefinitely. There is no known cure.

I have been suffering from this ailment for a while, but this was an especially bad week. I have been working diligently on Mystery Stole 3, but Melanie took off a week in honor of the release of the Harry Potter book, so I finished Clue 4 a week early. I could use that time to finish the Endless Edging of the Garden Shawl, R's nearly-finished socks (which I keep misplacing), the Hanne Falkenberg jacket that has been about 85% finished for two years, the alpaca shawl I started in the spring (but is too fuzzy to work on in the summer)... I actually sank so low as to order a kit for the lovely Bee Fields Shawl – in spite of my long "To Do" list and rapidly increasing stash.


The photo on the left shows MS3 completed through Clue 4. The one on the right shows more detail, and it is the first photo in which the beads are visible. The evolving design is beautiful, and I am enjoying the Kit-along immensely, in spite of the huge volume of email it has generated.

The other consequence of having to wait a week for the next clue is an increase on reading time. Inspired by Roberta's recommendation, I decided to eliminate one of the many lacunae in my literary education and read Beowulf. This particular edition, translated by Seamus Heaney, is extremely readable. In fact, I am finding it hard to put down. One of the most fascinating things about it is that the original Old English text is printed alongside the translation, and the occasional glimpse at the original shows very little correlation to modern English. Languages, we are told, change all the time, and a thousand years is a long time, but I am still astonished that there is almost nothing in the Anglo-Saxon text that is recognizable.