Joy and Sorrow

One finished object.  

I am so happy with this sweater.  Everything about it is great.  I love the yarn from the inimitable Midknit Cravings and the sweater detail at the hem which I completely fell in love with on Laura Aylor's pattern.

I did change the neck to be a turtleneck, but no matter how great a pattern is, it still has to work for the wearer.  I need a warm neck and this has it in spades.

When I finished it was time to clean out the bag and prepare it for the sweater chest. 

The bag was stuffed.  All of this was at the bottom of the bag, along with the yarn leftovers.

I should be able to make something lovely with this, two full skeins of Pesto plus about half a skein of Kelp.

Somewhat at a loose end,  I went to the WIPs bin, closed my eyes and pulled out whatever my hand touched.  Ah, a summer top.  

I love this yarn and hope it turns into a reasonable facsimile of a short sleeve summer tee.  It is brainless knitting.  It's only challenge is to manage the yarn and switch every second row.  Even that will be more intuitive once the sleeve is a bit farther along.  The shoulder is a wide contiguous saddle style shoulder and right now, I am at the part where the sleeve increases each row till it reaches a healthy third of the stitches needed for the top of the shoulder.  After that, it increases every second round as you knit down the yoke, till sleeve and yoke are long enough to separate the sleeves. Knitting it was a nice way to spend and evening.

I had a great sleep and then this morning was looking forward to putting on on of my favourite things, (They are all my favourite things), my version of Kate Davies Myrtle sweater.  I was about to put it on when my eye caught this.

Last time I wore it, I was emptying the dishwasher and got caught on a rack.  I couldn't find any damage that day but as you see, there certainly was.  It is repairable though, but it is not a happy thing at all.  One happy thing.  One sad thing.

I used to try to focus on being happy, picking apart my world, trying to sort out the things that made me unhappy and trying to clean those things out of my life so I could be happy. I have come to find that that way lies madness.  Happy is a moment in time.  It isn't static.  Happy is bits and pieces, important bits and pieces but it isn't natural to be happy all the time. I know that what I was searching for was contentment and once I started searching for that, rather than happiness, things worked better, life was better.  Trying to be content was something I could accomplish. It was okay to just be.

My sweaters are joy and sorrow, a rather small joy and  and a rather small sorrow in the great scheme of everything.  Joy and sorrow.  Two sides of the coin of life and contentment living on the edge between.