Tuesday 11 January 2011

Flibertigibbet

I slipped from a day of solid directed work to a day of flibertigibbet behaviour.  I flitted here and there and did not get a whole lot done.

I was restoring the house to post Christmas order.  There were a number of fits and starts to the day, but that task is done.  As usual, the house is littered with projects so when I was upstairs I knit on the seed stich vest project.  When I was downstairs, I knit on some WIP socks.  When I was in my study avoiding de-christmasing, I knit on the Shetland style shawl.  

So a pattern repeat was knit on the shawl, an inch on the socks, and a few rows on the vest.  It would have been more productive to just work on one thing, but it would not have been convenient.  I would not have taken all those little breaks that made the day so pleasant. 

Today there will be more directed knitting.  Knitting with friends this afternoon should make it easier to get a lot accomplished on one thing. I just don't know which one thing that will be.  

No I did not get to the River Valley Shawl.  That is going to have to wait for another day when the thought of ripping back doesn't bother me so.  

You know, that is the interesting thing about digging in the WIP baskets.  There are 2 classes of things that end up there. 

One class is the stuff that is always ongoing or is so simple that I do get tired of the colours or the yarn or the thought of it.  Socks, and the small shawls fall into this category.  Often they were started for a reason that was not that I needed to knit that project.  They were almost always started because I just needed to knit and the yarn was handy.  Might like the yarns, not deeply connected to the projects.

The second is the the mistake category.  All the good things are in this category and there is a lot of personal want in them too.  Each of them has some problem, so it was set aside.  I know the solution to each of them, I just have to rip back and do it before the project can move on.  

Which is how I get to what I was thinking about yesterday while I knit and de-christmased.  How much I dislike making mistakes.  When I discover a mistake, my instant reaction is to toss the thing aside while I think about it.  I have to move slowly to fi things or the fix might just be worse than the error.  If I don't get back to it immediately, it goes into a WIP basket and then it can percolate for months.

It isn't that I mind doing corrections.  It is the spectre of doing it that I hate (Reminds me of the evil spectre of dishes.  Or laundry).  Thinking about the doing, planning for and scheduling the doing of it carries the weight of the ages.  Thinking of it carries a heavy spectre, a gothic, dark, dank scary spectre that sends cold shivers down my back.

Once you get to the doing of it, it isn't so bad. 


1 comment:

Brendaknits said...

Dark, dank, scary, heavy - sounds like an allergic reaction to me. If Benydryl doesn't work, try red wine.