Comfort and Joy

The Catkins project falters at the threshold of its very inception.  I made a tactical error in the color choices, resulting in my old friend "not enough contrast".  This error seems to be one of my greatest hits.  Sometimes I worry it will end up on my tombstone:
 
"Here Lies Mary, who failed to choose colors with adequate contrast."

I knew something was wrong from the start, but my powers of denial being what they are (epic), I plowed ahead anyway.  Good thing I started small with a sleeve, which I only knitted halfway up before admitting that it was flatly All Wrong.  I know what to do - it just requires a visit with my new pals at Toots LeBlanc to sort it out.  Logistical bother, nothing more.  But disappointing, nonetheless.

Other things went sideways for me yesterday, as well.  A gargantuan project at the day job has completely derailed, so there I am further unfulfilled. 

Casting about for solace in the knitting pile (I used to call it "the knitting basket", which has long since overflowed and now fools no one; not even me) I picked up the Knot Garden.  Sleeve two is well underway, and greeted me like a good book I'd forgotten to finish.  Close as it is to completion, I gave it a few more rows.  I just wanted something to show for the day, even if it was only one more set of twists.  

It feels good to sit with an old and patient friend.  I lightened up, beginning even to fantasize about wearing the Knot Garden to Madrona in February.  Could happen.  There's only this one sleeve to go, after all.  At times like these, even the possibility of completion helps. 

Thin as I am spread at the moment, tangible progress is more precious to me than usual.  And there it was, waiting for me with the reliability that only knitting can offer.  Knitting is dependably there to give solace in a world filled with failure, both real and imagined.  Making one stitch at a time is proof and reinforcement of our ability to do something right, hundreds of times at a stretch.  The world can be cold and the people in it mean and petty.  But knitting will never blame us for things over which we have no control.  Knitting doesn't care if the laundry is done or not.  Knitting beckons us to be still, and focus on one small thing at a time. 

Tidings of Comfort and Joy, indeed.