Necessity's a Mother

Mother of invention?  Um...not exactly.  But at the moment I can finally boast 2 finished sleeves for Cecilia sweater.  In fact, here they are in all their unblocked glory.

Unfortunately the reason for this embarrassment of riches is a little, well, embarrassing.

I have to call myself a writer because, well, I write.  Obsessively.  For the hell of it and for no particular reason at all.  I also have to call myself a writer because I'm as weird in my writing habits as any established author.  Mechanical pencil and composition book?  Check.  Massive swathes of erasing and crossing out?  Check.  Word documents on Open Office?  Check.  All saved on a single 10-year-old flashdrive with no other purpose but to contain every poem, story, novel fragment, and brain dump accumulated over an entire decade?  Check.  No backup?  Come on, people, you mean you haven't seen stupider writing tactics?  My hearty congratulations, and may I suggest you stop reading my blog and go check out a real book.  While I wait for a guy named Lou in Irvine, CA, to receive what's left of my flashdrive and recover my collected works from what I can only hope is the damn thing's still-functioning brain.  Figures it's the hundredth or so time I knock my laptop off the couch with the drive still plugged in that the USB connector decides to give up the ghost and snap clean (or rather, jaggedly) off.  Or is it the hundred-and-first?

Anyhoo, here I sit with aching fingers and teeming brain (cross-reference Keats on that one, will ya, and correct me if I'm wrong?), with nothing to save my projects to besides my bastard lovechild of a cockroach and a brick wall, aka my ThinkPad, and no excuse not to make headway on some knitting.  At least while I still have both arms, both legs, and no flashdrive.