The party that this is a gift for is in an hour. I dunno…
I’m starting to think that I might not make it. I need to finish the hood, sew up the seams and install a zipper.
I’ve been thinking a lot about a comment that Chris made. She said “I always love to read the trials and tribulations of the harlot knitting to a crazed, self-imposed deadline.” Now that’s not just funny, it’s thought provoking.
1. What do you think it is that makes it seem reasonable at the time? I mean if it’s clear to Chris that I’m about to send myself into a knitting spiral of disaster and insanity…how come I can’t see it? What about “I think I’ll knit a sweater in three days” doesn’t sound just a little whacked to me? I retrospect, I swear that I just thought it would be a little “intensive”. I just thought I would have to apply myself. Where did I think my children/job/husband were going? Who did I think would do the laundry? When did I decide that I was no longer a mere mortal but a knitting machine with no need for sleep or food?
2. One good thing about this yarn is that when I was knitting at 2 am, desperately trying to pick up the stitches for the hood (what stitches? I swear to all that is woollen that if anybody proves to me they can see “stitches” I’ll give them a dollar) and I suddenly realized that I had hit the wall, my vision was going and my eyes were blurry with exhaustion….I didn’t have to stop. That’s a plus.
3. Beer is not a help.
Thursday night I took the blurry sweater to Amanda’s music night. (Once again, I have circled the indistinct blob that is my child, I can’t help myself)
She got a featured part in “The Entrance of the Queen of Sheba” (scroll down to “Disk one, track one”) and as I sat in the audience listening to her play I was virtually speechless. Amanda’s musical ability floors me at the best of times, it’s like watching her do an incredible magic trick, but this was stunning. When she first started playing the violin she sucked. I love the kid but I feel a little queasy when I think of the first couple of years, they took parental fortitude. The third year she was “pretty good” and we’ve hovered between “actually good” and “darned good” for the last couple of years. Thursday she made some kind of huge leap to “beautiful.”
There is something about seeing your teenager play in an orchestra that is enormously reassuring. It’s just so stunning and civilized that it’s almost impossible to reconcile the young woman on the stage with the mouthy kid who broke curfew the day before. Even though she has blue stripes in her hair, as she draws the bow across the instrument all I can think is that it’s going to be all right. All the worry, angst and concern I have for this teenager slipped away, if only for 3 minutes.
If she can do this incredible thing, and do it so well… I can’t believe that she could grow up to be a bad person. I really think she’s going to work out.
It was so good that I put down my knitting to listen, which brings us right back to the sweater not being finished. If you only had an hour…what would you do?
Yarn Harlot
Silly to even offer this as a solutoin, because I know that you are knitting and not hovering over your comment booard, but. . .
I have given incomplete sweaters as presents before, with the promise to finish ASAP. I even gave an ex-boyfriend the sweater I had been making for him for his birthday (thus, the “ex” in boyfriend. He wore it for years. I even fixed the cuffs for him when they wore out.
You are a clever girl, no doubt you will find some charming way to present it as a work in progress. How about using the yarn as the ribbon, and put the ball where the bow would be, with two needles stuck into it for decoration? You just get the whole thing handed back to you. No less appreciated for being almost done.
Now, I got no idea what just happened, but that comment wasn’t good enough to see twice. Delete me, baby!
I’ve been there. I put the pieces in a box and wrapped it pretty and took it back after it was opened and finished it. It was appreciated twice.
I wouldn’t have been able to knit through that performance either – I get teary-eyed at all my kids’ events and even Andie’s hockey games – she doesn’t even have to score!
Yay Amanda!
No advice here about figuring out how long things should take. I’m lucky if I get out the door each morning on time, and it’s not like eating cereal takes appreciably different amounts of time each day.
I like the “unfinished” present approach. The only alternative I can see is to give up on the hood and just knit a short collar.
In any case, here’s a cheer to cheer you on, accompanied by the shaking of Snowflake pom poms:
Go, Harlot, Go! Knit, Knit, Knit! Rah! *grin*
Claudia: Now I have no idea what happened. I deleted one of your double messages and both are gone.
Some cosmic link?
Don’t computers save us *so* much time?
I wish my mom had told me something — even a fraction as nice as what you wrote — when I was young and practicing cello 40 hours a week. Your children are so lucky to have you.
Steph –
I can’t necessarily see when I’m about to send myself into “a knitting spiral of disaster and insanity,” either. It’s up to the knitters around us to point this out; hopefully they do so gently and without a bag of popcorn hidden behind their backs.
(Popcorn? Nah, can’t stand the stuff. I certainly wouldn’t be fiddling and snacking on popcorn while the Harlot burns the midnight oil. I don’t know why you’re suggesting such a thing! No, DO NOT open that cupboard!!)
Anyway, what was I typing? Oh yeah. For example, yesterday it was pointed out to that when one is knitting for an unexpectedly scheduled baby shower one week away, perhaps one should be knitting a baby sweater out of superbulky yarn or heavy gauge rope instead of the tricksy Mexicali baby ole
http://lacolorina.indigoblues.ca/gallery/poppage.asp?popID=25
out of sock yarn on a US size 2 needle… (For the morbidly curious, altho I do have the Fortissima sock yarn used in the lovely picture above, I put it someplace very safe. Very very safe. So safe that the yarn has no worries about being knitted anytime in the foreseeable future. Instead, I’m using Meilenweit Multieffekt
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Z18765058
in color 3050, which, contrary to the picture, is mostly green.)
Must go. Must…resume…knitting…
S-
It is my theory that if a knitter is sent to hell, she will be sentenced to knit an afghan out of Snowflake.
It won’t take an eternity but it will feel like one.
I tried to make a pink sweater for my daughter once from that evil Snowflake – I finished the back and sentenced it to a slow death in the back of my closet. Every once in a while it reappears, scares the life out of me, I swear at it and cast it away again.
One hour left? I’d put my feet up, have a cup of coffee and some cookies and a nice, long chat with a friend. There’s a fine line between warping the time-space continuum and just plain insanity…
wow. that rocks. in an hour? i would write a brief letter to the mouthy teenager about how proud of, grateful for, and impressed with her you are… and save it until her 18th birthday.
and between now and then–as less *lovely* moments in her adolescence appear–you could open it and read it and be reminded and soothed that she really will turn out ok.
for the gift? a card with a digi pic of the sweater to be. a lunch date later to deliver it is a better present anyway.
p.s. Amanda? Congratulations on making your mom speechless. Steph? I’d hope you’d be speechless. It’s a concert. It’s rude to talk during concerts. 😉