Friday, September 21, 2007

Zen. Well, Not Yet

I found a copy of Bernadette Murphy's Zen and the Art of Knitting in a used book store the other day (as well as A Guide for the Jewish Homemaker from 1956, which I also bought, but I digress). It's been my subway reading for the past week or so and I must say, it is enthralling. For the past few years I've definatly been what one could call a product knitter. I stress over how well I can knit something and how fast it gets done. No matter how fat the yarn is or how simple the pattern, I always find myself racing for the finish line with white knuckles and my naturaly colorful dialect erupting from between my cleched and grinding teeth. Either that, or I abandon a project in the second half if it's not going as fast as I want it to.

I realized this morning that it's been 10 days since my last post (horrors!) and how while I've been knitting, I didn't have much to show for it. I found my sweater stopped halfway through a row and on the first row of a new stripe. While this would normally infuriate me to no end (I'm a really laid back guy, I just seem to have some completely misdirected yarn rage issues) I just picked it up to finish my row and and continued worrying about the fact that in just two years I would be jobless, and 100k in the hole. When I noticed that I was knitting a sweater out of $15 balls of wool while stressing about money, I laughed. Hard.

I looked at my big pile o' wool and wondered how I was able to afford all of the yarn for this sweater when three years ago I considered buying lambspride a luxury. I remembered that Andrew bought me a ball for our first Valentines Day, and I bought three more in the same color with a gift certificate I got for my birthday. Two balls came from a day I aced a Botany exam and so on.
While normally I try to avoid the corny, the wistful and the hopeful, I had an ephiphany. A lot of small steps go a long way. My knitting will get done. My work will get done. The house cleaning probably won't get done ( let's be honest here).

Okay. that being said, Here's where I'm at on the sweater:

sweater

Here's the yarn:

manos

Oh knitting, you are wise and have many lessons to teach us.

5 comments:

The A.D.D. Knitter said...

I love this post, as 'misdirected yarn rage issues' is my middle name. I've found also that having a blog really pushes me to want to race to finish a project, it's insanity I tell you!

Charles said...

I also brought a $15 a skien of the yarn for my mom's top Iam working on... I still need a 5 more..Yek! I understand what you feel about! Sometime think about I should use $6 yarn instead of $15 yarn. And instead spanding $15 buying nice sweater already made!

Anonymous said...

I miss you!

sko_G knits said...

hey, just look at that gorgeous stuff!! totally worth it, and in the end you will have a beautiful sweater to enjoy.

goblinbox said...

'Misdirected yarn rage issues' made me laugh out loud.

And yes, knitting-for-it's-own-sake is a sweet lesson. Nice post!

(Followed you here from Ravelry, btw.)