"...that knits up the raveled sleeve of care..."

Hamlet was talking about sleep, of course, but I couldn't help but notice that his analogy applies quite literally to this sweater:

Poor thing just spilled its guts.  "The vomiting Sleeve!  Film at eleven."

I promised myself that if I could knit to the end of the skein I was using on the sweater middle that I could take a "break" by working on a sleeve for a while.  No lie, people, I am drowning in the Stockinette Ocean.  I think I'm getting arthritis.  So I made it to the end of the skein, and without even attaching a new one, I gleefully flung the whole works aside in favor of the sleeve.  Nothing like a change of scenery for motivation.  Okay, the scenery is pretty much the same, but the rows are shorter, and some of them have increases.

Increases is right!  The thing was growing at an alarming rate, but not in length - in circumference.   Note to self:  perhaps the sleeve increases need to be farther apart?  Nah,  I'll just block it firmly.  It'll all come out in the wash.  Now it looks like a jam funnel - totally weird.  What in the name of all things linty is going on here?  Note to self:  You have obviously stretched the thing somehow, you are going to have to block this sleeve aggressively.  Another half inch goes down and it's even worse.  Note to self:  sleeve blocking will have to be brutal.  Now it's starting to feel like a horror movie: something is wrong, and I can tell by the theremin music in the background.  Just to reassure myself, I check the needle size.  Yeah, I know this is the size three.  I can tell because the number "3" is rubbed all the way off.  See, I'll even pull out the size guage and prove it...CRAP.  It's a size 4.  That's when the sleeve threw up.  Projectile yarn.  Spewed like a frat boy on a Friday night.  

There, there little sleeve.  You'll feel better in the morning.  Want a cool washcloth?  Yeah, me too.

Only An Ocean Away

It has been said that the body of a sweater can be an endless ocean of stockinette.

I tend to agree.  Today's meditation focuses on the middles of sweaters. 

Between the interesting and exciting Beginning of the sweater, and the triumphant exhilaration of the End of the sweater, lies the no-man's land of the body knitting.  It's a desert, an unbroken field, an airport parking lot.  Immense, gargantuan, and freakin' huge.  The sweater I am working on has entered this stage prematurely, on day 2 of its existence.  It's my own fault.  I thought I would mix things up a bit, and eschew my typical extravagant lower border in favor of something more restrained.  I'm supposed to challenge myself, no?  Well that was fine, except I forgot that a simple little border does not offer the bonus of distraction.  When the first thing I do on a garment is six or eight inches of challenging color work, the difficulty usually distracts me from thinking about how many inches are completed.  Not so with this number.  The wimpy little nancy-border was over in like two seconds, leaving me on stranded on the beach.  Nothing to see but the miles of flat water ahead.  No cables or shaping or interest of any kind.  Nothing but the hypnotic sameness of knit, knit, knit. 

I have heard this kind of knitting referred to as "TV knitting".  I think it refers to the kind of knitting you can do at the same time as something else, because it doesn't require much of you.  Since ALL of my knitting is done at the same time as something else, I can't really categorize it that way.  This is neither talent nor gift; only strategy.  If I didn't co-knit (knitting while also in line at the DMV, knitting while also quizzing a child on spelling words, knitting while also water skiing - you know the drill), I would never knit at all.

This piece is also big.  I mean BIG, as in 288 stitches in a round, on size 3 needles.  That's a 48" circumference, to you and me (provided the Gods of Gauge are feeling benevolent - never a guarantee).  I made the mistake of estimating how many stitches are going to be in the thing:  80,640.  This does not encourage me.  I have decided instead to measure my progress, not by the stitch, or even the inch, but by the skein.  That's right; even yardage is too weak a measurement;  I need the big guns.  I have estimated that 5 inches of sweater body length equal about one skein of yarn, so that is going to be my progress milepost.  I predict that I will have to knit one whole skein every day this week to stay on schedule.  Even for a knitting maniac, that is a fat-ass goal.

I will now retreat to what relative privacy I can , and execute the following emergency measures:

1.    A sincere entreaty to the patron saint(s) of Repetitive Motion Injury - anybody know who that is?
2.    Blood sacrifice to Garterina and Stockinetta, the Pagan Gods of dull knitting.
3.    Serene reflection on the nature and consequence of overcommitment.
4.    Location of the backup emergency corkscrew.

Can't See the Forest for the Trees

Today the view from my lap looks like this:

And it's pretty appropriate, because I seem to have lost perspective on a few things.  Today's gentle reminders to myself include:

1.  I will not die if I miss my publication deadline.  I hereby declare that instead of going fetal every time I look at a calendar, I will calm the hell down and enjoy the PROCESS of sample knitting.  The sun will still shine, the rain will still fall, and the front doorknob will still come off in my hand every third Wednesday, weather or not I achieve my literary goals. 

2.  While I acknowlede that there is more in the universe than my narrow little existience, I must also resist the pull of Project Lust; the force of nature that compells me to pick this, of all times, to take up, say, papermaking or sashiko quilting, or Renaissance dance.  However focused I am on the project at hand, the instinct to begin something new gains power in direct proportion.  I will stomp on this impulse, remembering that diluting my attention is the opposite of getting done.

3.  I will be nice to my loved ones.  Phillip has filled my car's cupholders with golf balls (your guess is as good as mine).  The children insist that they exist solely to eat sugar and watch television.  Even the kittens are climbing the walls (literally, using the draperies to belay one another).  None of these things is intended as a personal assault on my well-being.  They are just life.  My life.  However bizarre it may be.  So the people/creatures I share time and space with deserve my love and patience, regardless of any other demands placed on me.

4.  If these reminders fail to work today, I will remember that tomorrow is another gift I will be given, in which to try again.