Crude but Right

The realization yesterday that my 60g a day challenge for the Tour de Fleece had unwittingly turned into a 100g a day challenge hit me like a ton of bricks.  I really had been pretty pleased with myself up until the moment that I weighed it all and added it up, and all day yesterday no matter what I did, the knowledge that 100g had to be spun in the little time available to me made me crazy. 

Just the idea that I could spin that much and still not hit my target was a pretty big surprise. I mean, I really haven’t been slacking.  That’s a pretty epic amount of yarn that I’ve come up with… and if my best effort every day hadn’t gotten me there, then I couldn’t see what was going to change in the next few days to get different results. 

Then it hit me.  I’d been spinning as much as I could on the days that I could.  There were whole honking days in there, especially during the retreat, that I really didn’t do much more than a metre or two.. just enough to say I had spun that day. Then there were two whole days lost to travel… I started adding it up and realizing that it was actually super impressive that I was where I was.  I mean, once you subtract the days I couldn’t spin, I’ve actually been doing about 100g a day – and that gave me renewed hope.  To finish my challenge I don’t actually need to bust a move harder than I have been, I just need to keep it up. 

Redoubling my efforts seemed like madness, but carrying on without quitting? I’m a mother! I can carry on without quitting.. that’s like… all that mothers do.  Dinner again? Carry on without quitting.  Baby up for the 17th time that night? Carry on without quitting.  Teenager asking again for something you’ve explained a thousand times that they can’t have no matter how much they tell you that you have no idea what you’re doing all that you’re a maniac compared to all the other mothers in the world? Carry on without quitting.  Not a problem. 
I went back to the stash pile I pulled out for the challenge and grabbed the next fibre in the queue.  It’s a nifty bump of roving from Three Bags Full called "Sage Brush Hill" and it’s all full of little nepps and chunks and bits. 

The flyer with it says it’s Romeldale cross wool, with dyed tussah silk and silk noil (that’s the neppy part) carded in.  I’m not usually a fan of lumpy bumpy roving, because it’s pretty inevitable that it will become a lumpy bumpy yarn, but this is so pretty that I’ve managed to convince myself that it will just be "tweedy".

I forged ahead and spun it all up, and although it took me until this morning to finish, technically that’s another 115g since I realized that I need 100g a day – which would put me ahead, except it needs plying.  That’s the bad news.  The good news is that the next thing in the queue is going to be spun to a 2ply bulky, and that’s going to go a lot faster.  Might even get me ahead.

I was explaining all of this to a friend.  Explaining that I’ve really thought about it, really examined it, gotten into the math a bit, and that despite the setbacks,  that I think now it’s going to go okay, and that I might even finish, and wasn’t that good news? The friend listened and then said something very wise. The perfect thing to say while I was stressing on it.  They asked me if I knew what the really good news was? The best news of all? 
I said I didn’t know.

She said (and I quote) "Absolutely jack-sh*t is going to change in your life if you fail. It’s like knitting.  Don’t be a freak."

Oh.  Right.