Third Review

Today tastes like jerky-flavored cotton candy. Promising, but falling short and more than a little odd.

In case you're looking for the lace reversal post, and bewildered by the obvious lack of relevance, I hit the "publish" key a little too fast. Ooops. I'm in the process of re-knitting samples for photos, so I expect to have that post up sometime next week. Drop a comment, and I'll add you to the list of folks to notify when I get the lace reversal up.

Meanwhile, it's the 5th of May, and thus it's time for the Groundhog Resolutions Day review. A reminder of my goals for the year:

1. I will not beat myself up for falling short of perfection with respect to this list.

2. I will complete 9 knitted projects this year.

3. I will complete three spreads per month in the art journal.

I'm managing number 1 surprisingly well. Normally, when I make a list I go waaaaayyy overboard with things I want/expect to accomplish. I forget to add in things like naps and necessary break and general slack time for working on other things that come up and strike my fancy. (An Altered Spanking Paddle Swap? A Hideous Fairy Exchange? SIGN ME UP! Oooops . . .)

This time, though, I'm starting to see that overscheduling is a habit of mine. Perhaps that will be a goal for next year--"I will give up overscheduling myself. I am not an airplane."

Number 2 is moving along. I finished a shawl in April, so that's 2 of 9. There's still time to make it all happen by the end of the year without resorting to knitting socks and hats and baby things (5 hour sweaters, anyone?)

And even if I don't make 9 by New Year's, I will have cleared out several projects. I've had the yarn for this shawl for literally years.¹ It's good to have it hanging out in another form, rather than wrapping the skein around my neck. Much more attractive this way.

And then we get to my bete noir, number 3. The infamous number 3.

Well.

That about sums it up. I haven't touched this since February. Part of it is that it's beastly hot in the paper studio (no air conditioning, south central Arizona, summer). Need I say more?

Yeah, okay, the other part of it is that I bit off more than is realistically chewable. If I really hadda gotta do it, I'd be out there at midnight on Fridays and Saturdays, I'd be out there early in the morning on weekdays, I'd find some way around it, but I'm not doing so.

Mostly, I'm choosing to knit or read. I haven't even bound this first quarter's output yet. I need to finish the art papers I use to make the pages, then glue the stories and pictures to them and arrange the signatures and yadda yadda yadda. I want to clean the studio so it's easier to work in, I have other projects hanging out, and I have every excuse in the book for not doing so, it seems.

All right. This will probably change again come fall and winter, when it cools down some and I'm more interested in papery things once more. Interesting. Perhaps I need to keep this in mind next year, that I like to knit more beginning in early spring and go through late fall, then work the hours of small daylight in the paper studio under the glow of the lightbulb, in the chilly winter temps.

I also need to keep in mind that I need slack time, that I have enough daily activities to keep me running on the wheel, and if I add more to that daily/weekly/monthly goal, things will fall off, and I hate that.²

Perhaps in 2009 I'll be writing about "I will schedule at least one weekend per month where I don't have anything particular to work on."



1. I bought it for a class that was being held at a big knitters' convention. I'd wanted to go to this for years, so we're talking 2002 or so. The teacher then decided that rather than teach shawl design, she was going to do a little knit-along project where she blathered on a bit about lace knitting (yeah, holes and decreases, uh-huh) for about an hour, then handed out project sheets (is this IT?) and that was that. On top of that, it was a goofy little lace scarf project.

I could have done this myself without the "class." (Without the registration fee, without the travel costs, without the hotel costs, without the food costs . . . that would have bought a LOT of yarn and pattern dictionaries. If you put your ear to the monitor you can probably hear my blood boiling.)

2. I hate things falling off. I hate having many projects in half-completed states and feeling like I have no way to devote enough time to them to finish. I have having desires and realizing that I have so many things begun that I'm only shooting myself in the feet to start another.