Do-It-Yourself Intervention

Given the "tone" of last night's post, I think it is safe to say that I have hit something of a wall with the knitting. Announcing that the whole activity is stupid is probably a strong indicator of some Hobby Related Dissatisfaction.

At the moment, I have two projects on the needles from which to choose.

Project 1: A simple scarf. It's got the whole handspun yarn thing going for it. That makes for some interesting texture and you can't beat the novelty of knitting with that which you made from your own little hands. But it is not a particularly stimulating pattern. It's really pretty with all the neat colors. And it will surely make for some great traveling knitting. But I'm bored.

Project 2: Having reviewed the last fifty million projects from the Sheepish Annie Gallery Of Fine Handknits, I have come to realize that the reason I'm bored is due, at least in part, to the fact that I have become a Boring Knitter. For whatever reason, I've been leaning towards projects that are fairly easy or are ones that I've knit umpty-bazillion times. Not only is this boring, but has resulted in a little skill loss. There are one or two things that I used to knit and now seem to mess up without even trying. So I chose a pattern that was not overly technical, but a bit more challenging than my usual sock. I have, as of last night, ripped it back four times. For a while, I thought that maybe I'd had a stroke or had suffered memory loss following an alien abduction. Anything, even a large hole in my head, was preferable to having to look at that pile of squiggly, frogged yarn and realize that I have no good reason for not having followed the pattern correctly.

(There is also the matter of the ribbed sock for which I have yet to choose the best possible heel but we aren't counting that right now since I'm sort of dazzled by all the possibilities and need to not think about it too much)

It is probably not all that surprising that I might be a bit put out with the whole process at this point. But I began to be somewhat concerned around 9:00 last night after yet another round of riotous ripping. I flung the offending fiber to the carpet and proceeded to make a rather grand pronouncement, the gist of which was that I was finished with the knitting. Henceforth, my medium was to be Popsicle sticks. I declared my intention to scour the internets for any and all websites devoted to the fine art of crafting with wood and school glue. I found it highly probable that I could corner this market and perhaps make my fortune selling ill-formed sculptures from this under-appreciated source of art.

(It is worth noting that this was something of a waste of a good pronouncement. I'm the only human living here and the cats don't really care how I spend my free time as long as the kibble pouring and litter scooping responsibilities are met.)

It was at this point that I decided it might be time to get a grip. If a genuine grip wasn't possible then even a loose little pinch would work. I needed an intervention. And, once again, there was no one around to start the intervening unless I wanted to take advice from furry creatures who would only tell me that I needed to spend a bit more time sniffing catnip and snoozing in the sun. Not a bad way to spend a day...but not what I needed in terms of an intervention.

So I started to think about the knitting and what might be going wrong with the process. And here's the thing: I don't knit because I'm naturally good at it. In fact, we have something of an "opposite" situation here. I am not a person for whom patterns of any kind make any real sense. It doesn't matter if it is numerical, behavioral, or a series of repeating instructions that will ultimately end up as a sleeve. I just don't see it right away. Sometimes I never do. Thus, any finished knitting that comes off the needles here is nothing short of an imposition of will, a desire to make it happen in spite of my not really understanding how K-ing 2 Tog will somehow end up being pretty.

Without going into a lengthy lecture on the subject of Learning Styles (which I actually know a whole bunch about) here's the gist of the whole intervention:

Maybe I need to lighten up a bit...

There you go. I'm never going to be one of those people who posts about how they were able to knit something in the car because it was just a simple, six row repeat and easily memorized. That's OK. I will never awaken in the night with the realization that I have conceived of a pattern for a sofa slipcover and that I must jot it down before I forget it. Also OK. There is every reason to believe that the two projects upon which I am knitting not-so-happily away are going to take a while. Maybe even a long while. Again with the OK.

It's knitting. And, while I was probably a little rash in calling it, "stupid," it does have a tendency to frustrate. It can sit in the little basket by the couch for a while and, eventually, it won't seem so stupid anymore. I'm sure of it.

But, I have to wonder...could I really have been the foremost designer of Popsicle stick art in our time?

SA