I have done Brain Work! I have now designed, calculated, and written out a full pattern with all the fun abbreviations and row counts and shape guides and everything to combine machine and hand knitting. It's a guy's sweater for this first attempt, because the shaping is easier. OMG. LOTS OF NUMBERS AND MATH. And translating things from three dimensions into two dimensions into little abbreviations and... anyway. I like doing stuff like this because I realize how much I do know amid the "OMG WHAT AM I DOING!?"

That's reassuring, although even when I'm good at something I don't usually like to put my good-ness to the test. It's a very nice little ticky-box on my health checklist to have sat down to a project on a day when I was feeling pretty awful (general whiny memo to world: I HATE HERBS AND VITAMINS THAT MAKE ME QUEASY AND DIZZY. HATE HATE HATE.) and actually pulled together all sorts of disparate sources and double-checked and thought and did math and pulled it together. I STILL HAVE A BRAIN!

Now, however, I am flailing with a misplaced panic, because my brain decided I must be back in school if I'm doing things like research and therefore should freak out over deadlines and projects and schedules and everything else. It's like academic fight or flight mode. *shudders* GOD, I hated this at Brown, but right now it's kind of cracking me up. (It can stop now, though. *digs nails into desk*)

I showed off my pages of knitting code to my mother, fishing for a response of "you understand this!?" (I don't know if other knitters get joy from this -- it gives me such guilty gleee when people stare in horror at pattern gobbledegook.) Her reaction was, instead, "You enjoy this better than your novel, don't you?" The answer at present is OH MY GOD, YES, but I have faith: when it comes time to sew seams, I will rediscover my love of writing trashy romance novels.