January 26, 2010

Vivid Imagination

This post really isn't the way I wanted it to be.  I think it's the byproduct of a vivid imagination, but it really bugs me.  I imagine the way something will be, or the way a conversation will go - sometimes I even mentally write the script for other people. (Note: This never works. They never say what I have imagined they will.  This may be because I am more or less hoping their part will be "I'm so sorry and I am invested enough in your happiness that I will never do that again"  or "Oh wow, Mum.  I had no idea that you felt that way about my room being dirty, but now that you have explained it to me so eloquently I am going up there to tidy and organize it directly"  or  "Honey,  you're right.  I don't do my fair share of the housework and the global work division between the genders is really discriminatory. The only way to correct that is for me to go scrub the snot out of the bathroom without being asked and then keep it up for the rest of my life." ...but I digress.) 

The point is, I imagine the way something will happen, look or be... and then I imagine it so completely that when it doesn't go that way I'm totally shocked and can't believe it.  (This curse is a related subgroup of the curse that lives off optimists and most sane people, where a completely mad arsehole shafts you over and over and over again and every single time they do, you say "I can't believe it. Why is this happening? Why are they being so mean?" and all of your friends look at you like you've just grown a crop of tiny ears all over your chin and shake their heads sadly because this person is a completely mad arsehole who has shafted you over and over.   Sorry. Another digression.) 

This time, what I imagined while I was knitting Joe's tremendously large pair of Christmas socks, was how good they would look photographed sort of casual-like in the living room.  My chesterfield is brown, the walls are red, the carpet and wood floors are neutrals.  I thought about his feet, resting elegantly (or as elegantly as feet that big do things) swathed in thousands of stitches that are so nice that you can practically see the love in them, and the sun would shine in and show you the cables and it would just be the coziest sock picture ever. It would look like hot chocolate after sledding tastes.  I had the whole thing planned, and when I finished Joe's socks three days ago - I couldn't wait to make it beautiful. So excited.  It was going to look like the freakin' cover of a Martha Stewart magazine.  I was so ramped up that I actually forgot that I have several barriers to this plan. 

1. Joe is not as interested in sock pictures as I am.  (This is something we're working on in our marriage, but we're not there yet.)

2. Joe is really only available for sock pictures about three minutes a day. Combined with the low priority he feels for sock pictures (see #1) this further reduces the window for artistic sock expression.

3. It is late January in Canada.  I have no idea where I was getting the idea of sun streaming in a window.  Whatever science says that the darkest days are in December is cracked.  It has to be now. The sun is starting to be something that we talk about in the past tense.

I have been three days trying to take this picture that I imagine, and nothing is working.  Can't pin Joe down, or I do pin Joe down but it's too dark for a proper sock picture, or Joe won't put his feet the way that he does on the Martha Stewart magazine cover in my head... (That - by the way? That makes me want to scream "you did it once you can do it again" which is - I know, completely insane.  I don't scream it.  I say nice things like "Maybe you could put your feet closer together honey.  Thanks!")  We've given the sock photo shoot (shut up. You know you have them at your house) tons of energy and it's just not working- and it's making me nuts.  Yesterday the sun almost came out for about three minutes and I tried to get Joe out of the bath fast enough for a sock picture and we missed it.  (I don't think he tried very hard.  See #1)

In the interest of my sanity (and possibly Joe's, because I really did try to haul a big naked wet guy out of a bath yesterday and ram socks on him in the living room) I'm giving up. It's only making me hate Martha Stewart for setting the bar too high anyway.  Screw it. Hey everybody, look!  I finished a pair of socks for Joe.  I used a vintage sock book that I have, but the pattern has been republished in a Patons book - "Classics in Kroy"#922, if you can find it.

and STR lightweight in Joe's colour "Meet Brown, Joe".

1.5 skeins, very big.  Long time to knit. Nice cables.

Better pictures forthcoming in June, when my husband won't be any more co-operative, but at least there's a chance that that big burning ball of fire in the sky will be around.  

Posted by Stephanie at January 26, 2010 11:48 AM