Today’s WIP is the Parallelolamb by Stephen West. This is another pattern that I assumed was pretty popular. I tagged it on Instagram and realized that is actually had very few tags. There also aren’t that many projects for it on Ravelry. It’s interesting to see what takes off and what doesn’t.
I used a bunch of scraps to make this shawl, so it has sat in time out a few times while I waited for scraps. The shawl is knit on 4 long circular needles at once, so you don’t have to pick up stitches. It does make it a bit like fighting a jellyfish, though. I’m often getting poked by a random needle tip or having this strange thing happen where one of the needles stabs through the fabric and kind of ties the shawl in a knot. It has definitely gotten better as the shawl has grown, because the needles are a bit more stretched out.
The nice thing about this pattern is that you’re just increasing on one side and decreasing on the other, and it’s all in garter stitch. As long as you remember which side to work on next (there’s a handy chart in the pattern too), then you can just knit and knit without thinking. My rows are pretty long now, so it is requiring larger and larger scraps. It’s also getting pretty warm to work on, so I think I’ll probably finish it in the fall. That’s fine, since I’m not going to be wearing this beast when it’s 90+ degrees out anyways.
For today’s run I had some harder intervals, so I thought I’d like something engaging to listen to. I picked the latest episode of Moonbeaming, where Sarah discussed shady practices within the New Age community. Her guest, Katya Weiss-Andersson, is someone that I feel like I must know, based on where she lives and what she has done. All of the alternative health/wellness circles are small enough that you tend to bump into the same people.
Overall, I loved the whole discussion. I’m very aware of the way that religious retreats and communities manipulate emotions. A lot of New Age teachers have borrowed some of these unhealthy practices too. It’s good to step back and see the many influences on each movement and the ways that it shapes the community. Even though people like to think that they’re above the influences of patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy, transphobia, etc… the people with power in society still end up being the same people in power in subcultures. That means a lot of the same problems exist in both places.
The episode gave me lots of food for thought and made my V02Max intervals go by quickly, so it’s a win-win. I still have about 15 minutes left, which I think I might listen to while my son is getting his teeth cleaned this morning. The sounds at the dentist office aren’t my favorite, so it’ll be a good distraction.
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