I tried to take a progress photo. Both pieces attached to the same yarn ball, spread out on the carpet.

The picture looked wrong. The middle section buckled. The cowl twisted left. The hat curled in on itself. On the screen it looked like a mistake.

In person it made sense. Yarn has a way of holding three dimensions at once. The camera wants everything to lie.

I took four more photos. Deleted all of them.

One pattern moves faster. Not the one I expected. The hat is smaller, simpler. It should win.

The cowl keeps winning.

After a few days I noticed why. The cowl lives on the side table by the good chair. The hat stays in a bag by the door. I sit in the good chair more than I stand by the door.

The slow pattern collects the distracted hours.

My hands switch without planning it. I work the cowl until something feels off. A slight ache in my thumb. A cable that doesn’t look right. Then I pick up the hat and the hat feels steadier for a while.

Tension shows up like a body alarm. Not a thought.

There’s probably a faster way to do all this. There usually is. One project at a time. Finish, then begin again. Nice clean edges. One set of numbers to trust.

But the two ends keep tugging at each other.

I had to frog six rows on the cowl last Tuesday. Miscounted a repeat. When I pulled the yarn back, the hat side suddenly had extra slack. The ball shifted. The whole system rebalanced in my lap.

Frogging became a negotiation. Every inch I took back from one side was an inch the other side could claim. The yarn length is fixed. Every revision spends from the same wallet.

Near the end of the skein, the difference between center-pull yarn and outside-pull yarn gets more obvious. The center strand has been handled more. Worked and reworked. It has a tired look. The outside strand still looks fresh, like it’s just arrived.

A twisted bit showed up in the cowl. I didn’t fix it. It’s buried in a purl ditch where it won’t be noticed unless someone goes looking with their finger.

I tried photographing the project again on white paper, like people do online. The hat photographed fine. The cowl refused. It kept catching shadows wrong. The yarn between them looked like a weak bridge.

The project is real. It just resists being turned into content.

On the table tonight both pieces wait for the same last inches. The cowl needs a little more than the hat. The yarn between them is getting short enough that I can feel the ending approaching in my hands.

The ball has collapsed in the middle. Barely holding its shape. Both needles still loaded.

Mid-argument.