Parallax Knitting

I finished my second unfinished project this week.  That means that I can start a new project with complete impunity at any time.  Of course I could have started a new project any time before finishing two projects, but this year I decided to finish two projects for every one I start.  I guess it is silly to talk about a New Year’s resolution like a wish coming true, but some times it feels that way.

I guess one just has to grab the bull by the horns, take responsibility for one’s own fate, and all that. I confess I have decided not to make any important New Year’s resolutions, because I think that if I think something is really sufficiently important to do, then I should just do it.  It seems like a capitulation of some kind to treat change as something that requires a special day, but for my hobby I think it is a perfect time to give in to tradition and have a resolution instead of being so puritanical.

I finished the sweater in the previous post and in so doing have freed a wonderful amount of knitting paraphernalia, including stitch holders (I haven’t had access to real stitch holders since 2008, and I can tell you that waste yarn works almost as well in most ways and in some ways is actually better) and 6.5mm knitting needles (date since last access also 2008).

Saying this makes me wonder if I ever needed or will need them at all, because if I didn’t use them in two years, will I ever really need them?

This is definately the road down which asceticism of some kind lies, and I don’t want to get carried away, but I am trying to keep getting rid of things until I only have things I think beautiful or know to be useful — that is surely a more elegant way of putting it than most of the de-cluttering show hosts use (this is a very loose quotation from William Morris).

Well you may have not believed me when I said it (I may have been too sheepish to actually tell you, but I am now too lazy to check), but I have in fact decided to finish two projects for every one I start for a while, so that I can reduce the shameful number of unfinished objects in my knitting basket.  That is a little lie right there – they don’t fit in my knitting basket and haven’t for some time. They are in my knitting basket, in bags in the closet, in bags next to the chair at the foot of my bed, in plastic totes, and box shaped baskets beside my desk.

Yes, it may be getting out of hand.  But I just like starting projects so much more than I like finishing them.  There is so much thrill and potential in a new project.  You can go out and buy yarn (I cringe to say it), fuss around about the pattern (either deciding to buy one or write one), pull out the perfect set of needles (my needle resources are much diminished by being all over the house with half knit projects on them instead of in the vases on my desk so I can use them), cast on, then drop the whole thing for something else.  I am not talking about changing my mind and ripping out the knitting and starting something new – that is a decision, but just dropping what I am doing and starting something else.  This goes on to such a degree that I have actually needed to buy needles lately – I should never need to buy needles again unless I sit on them or something like that.

So I am finishing two projects for every one I start.  I finished the first one already, it is mittens with photos to come.  What to do next was more difficult to decide, but finally my gaze fell on this one:

I started this project in approximately November 2008 – the blog gives me away.

I started working on it again yesterday, and after experiencing the inevitable negative emotions that throwing a bunch of what is essentially string in not very secure bunches in a bag and leaving it there for over a year, but periodically pulling it out, looking at it, and putting it back, give rise to:

I have worked the front and back to the shoulder shaping, and have run into a little problem arising from not actually figuring out how the sweater would end before I started, and I am not sure I can make the stitch repeat work for the sleeves, i.e. I think they will need to either be too wide or too narrow.

I have however, come up with a brilliant, if somewhat nefarious plot — I may make it a sleeveless sweater.  I plan to finish it this weekend, and I already know what the next project I start will be.

The preview of Yarn Forward issue 23, including my entrelac gloves was posted today:

I hope you enjoy the pattern.  I know I enjoyed knitting the one and a half gloves I have knit from the pattern so far.  The samples were knit by Jenny, and they were knit using Noro Silk Garden Sock.

Classic Elite Yarns has released their new pattern line for summer 2010, including my Feather and Fan Cardi (see the Classic Elite Yarns website and Ravelry page):

I hope you like it — I know I enjoyed knitting it, and happily I made myself one very like it too.  I will post pictures of it when I can get some taken.

Right now my very favourite joke is to look out side and say: “It looks like winter wonderland!”

And you know something? I does — for months on end — enough winter wonderland for practically everyone — enough to share with a great many people and enough that it goes on long enough there is very little chance of missing it.

It is so hard for me to let go of things — even things that I know I will never accomplish, but I have decided to quit things that do not get me where I want to be.  Knitting with the knitting machine is one of those things.  It is not that I didn’t have ideas for it, or that it was a bad idea, but I have a job and hand knitting and other things I want to do, and I can’t be good at everything (I want to cross that out and write something more appealing to my vanity, but it is the truth).

I gave it away today, and Jenny can use it instead.  I will watch her productions with interest and leave you with a picture of my most successful project on the knitting machine:

I would like to wish everyone a happy new year and let you know that I have started another project — Bounded in a Nutshell: I plan to talk about my culinary adventures and my exploration of what I really like to eat.  I have decided to become good at cooking.  I know how to cook to some extent now, but I want to be good enough that it becomes an expression.  That may sounds pretentious and for that I apologize, but that is what I want.  I will continue blogging here too, so please stick around.

I know I decided not to start a cooking blog, but I reserve the right to change my mind as I am frequently wrong.  I tell myself that this is okay as long as long as I am not too wedded to my opinions.

I have been working on a crochet pattern and my mittens over the holidays and will have some pictures soon — I am so looking forward to wearing them.

As I am not sure how good it would be for us to actually implement all the things we say we want to achieve, I hope that you all are able to implement your new year’s resolutions proportionately to how good it would actually be for you to achieve them.

I am not sufficiently disciplined to not want to start something when I decide to stop doing other things.  As not starting something when you stop doing something would just be silly, and much too disciplined for me.  I have stopped selling on Etsy, reading any number of blogs, checking my email too many times a day, watching too much TV, and other things that escape me at the moment.

The corresponding thing I will start doing (again) is knitting others’ patterns.  I am somewhat happy with where my design is, but I feel that if I want to take it to the next level I will need to start knitting others’ patterns.  I have never found classes or discussion to be effective ways for me to learn knitting (I learned almost entirely from books): the only way I have ever really learned anything is from knitting it myself.

I was inspired by this article about Tiger Woods last week.  I want to live in that pursuit of excellence, and have the courage to cut out anything that is not perfection.

I have also started cooking more and as proof — my shopping list of last week:

I almost think I should start a cooking blog — that may be taking things too far by the time I finished making anything the light would be gone and I couldn’t take good pictures of it.

My midwinter feast of choice is Christmas, and I started decorating yesterday — I have almost completely dropped the ball and haven’t bought a present or written a card, though I did go grocery shopping, so it’s not a complete wash.

I did however pull out the Christmas decorations and decorate a house plant for a tree (it’s my new Norfolk pine):

There was a  bit of a snow storm yesterday:

Yes, that is snow almost halfway up my window — it’s quite charming today, but I am a little concerned that it will stay there all winter.  We are on the second floor, so surely it will blow off or fall off on someone’s head in a big clump.  If having a bird leave, um — droppings — shall we say, on your shoulder is lucky, them a big pile of snow on your head must be too.

And please remember, when you bite into that gingerbread cookie, that symbolic human sacrifice is an important part of the tradition.

Have a wonderful celebration of light coming back into the world.

Merry Christmas!

I was doing some professional reading today and came across this article. The salient question that started the subject of the article to start this process of stopping doing things is “Imagine that you’ve just inherited $20 million free and clear, but you only have ten years to live. What would you do differently—and specifically, what would you stop doing?”

I think I need a stop-doing strategy.  There are so many things I have spent so much time doing — there are of course the usual suspects: surfing the Internet in general and Ravelry in particular and watching TV, but there are also other things that just sap my energy and don’t fit into what I really want to accomplish.

After reading about being a professional crafter on Etsy yesterday (see post here), I realized anew that though superficially it looks lovely, and I feel a fair amount of jealousy towards people who are successful, it just isn’t for me.  I don’t want to do that even if I had the time to do it well, which I don’t — it just ends up being hokey, and I hate hokeyness.

This has led me to the decision to pull all my listings from Etsy — and it’s done.

Partly I just don’t like having to mail stuff then getting blamed when it gets stuck in customs.

I wonder what else I should stop doing.  Any suggestions? What do you want to stop doing?