*Keeping the romance alive.*

Tonight, I knitted while Chris contemplated importing labor from Romania.

The lighting was low, the patter of rain was audible inside, my sweetie was with me. What’s not to get a girl in the mood?

See?

This is all quite necessary. Prescriptive, one might say. For you see, I have fallen victim to that most dreaded ailment, Second Sock Syndrome. For those non-knitters out there, this is a real thing. “Look.”:http://www.google.com/search?q=second+sock+syndrome&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

I’ve considered… um…losing the project. Calling it quits. (Okay, so I didn’t, really. But so many have decided that their projects are too big, too complex; their goals too lofty or unrealistic. Falling at this point would not be failure. It wouldn’t be shameful. Would it?)

Oh, heck yeah. For me it would. For this project it would. For a sweater, or a shawl? I could see re-evaluating goals halfway through. But _socks_? This is a doable project. Sock (part one) showed that. Okay, okay, perhaps I got cocky. Perhaps I spent a whole day working on other things. Perhaps the knitting goddesses are smirking and sending very tiny bolts of lighting at certain synapses, altering my receptors and inhibiting production of happy hormones that are normally present when knitting this particular project. Knitting goddesses can be so cruel. (But I’m sure they have their reasons! Really!)

I also considered knitting a different sock, _with the same yarn_, so that the two socks would be a pair and would look similar enough to wear together. We are a visual species, attracted by color most of all. Who’s going to look that closely at my socks? (If you are that close to my feet, you’d best be buying me alpaca.)

This is something I may try in the future. But not now. Oh, no. I cast on the sock and I will persevere. Sometimes, however, you need a little something to get you going. Something tasty to grab your interest and get you over the tough spots. (Remember the joy in the golden stitches, the glowing definition, the fun pattern that was just random enough to keep you on your toes? Yeah, yeah…)

Call out the big guns. It’s time for… “Eurorails.”:http://www.mayfairgames.com/mfg-shop/0450-0479/qps/0457.html I love this game. You get to travel all over Europe laying down track and devising strategies to get your train with its loads of coal, oranges, and sheep (among many) from one city or another, and then you get paid, buy a faster train, or one with more carrying capacity, and lay more track, and rent your track, and generally act like a robber baron until you get stuck and have to wait eight turns before you have available cash or a doable job. It’s very keen, and I enjoy it immensely, especially when Chris and I each pretend to be two people and then try to keep them separate and in order.

So, there was lots of time to knit, while Chris tried to decide whether the track to Sarajevo was _ever_ going to pay off and I had to use his track to carry sheep from Cork to… well… Sarajevo. (Those of you with better eyes than mine will note that the sock-to-be is laid very cose to the sheep icon in Cork, in Ireland. I am a stickler for details, if nothing else.)

Knitting a sock while Ms. Red carries flowers to Lodz and chocolate to Naples tends to put one in a more _receptive_ state of mind. I knit a whole 10-row repeat while Chris drew track to Porto and delivered oil to Stuttgart. He may have won the game, but I have regained the love and respect for my little came-second sock that was, for a moment, lost.

A little effort is always worth it, to keep the romance alive.