Raising the Bar

Or at least we're going to make the attempt.

I'm not as far along on Rosemary's Little Sweater (that would be the green one) as I had hoped to be. That is to say, I'm not finished yesterday. I'm not even as far as I was on the Puntas Sweater (a.k.a., the blue one) as I was when I set my eminently attainable goal of finishing it in five days. Still, while not abandoning my newly declared rule of not setting my goals high, let's see what happens by next Friday.

I may have stacked the deck a bit in my favor. I don't know why I've made such heavy work of picking up the stitches for both these little sweaters, but I have. I noticed how close I was to attaining the finish line on sleeve 1 and it occurred to me that, once I had bound off the cuff, I might just put the sweater down for another year (or more) rather than face picking up another 60 stitches. I've only got four rows left on the first sleeve and have cleverly already hacked and slashed my way through picking up the stitches for the second sleeve.

I may have raised the bar, but I've set a ladder up against the pole.

Done

Well. That was surprisingly successful. Don't even think about pointing out that a project isn't finished finished until the ends are woven in and its been blocked.

I'd try the method on green sweater, except I haven't even started the sleeves.

So, is the lesson here set your goal low; if you don't shoot yourself in the foot first, you may achieve it?

Resolved

Despite the intense -- one might say, nearly overmastering -- distaste I have conceived for knitting sleeves,

I will finish this sweater this week.

Channeling Auntie M.

My Father had this aunt. Well, he had a couple. This one was his mother's youngest sister. Auntie M. After a fairly severe heart episode, Auntie M. came to live with us. This was not entirely a bad thing, you understand --she had a sense of humor and so did we (I vividly recall channelling Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz; you know, "Auntie Em! Auntie Em!") -- but, let's just say it was not always stress-free.

One of Auntie M.'s convictions was that our family unit maintained a certain not always acceptable to her level of arrogance. "You McCauleys," she would say, "you think you know everything." She had a point. We had our ways of doing things, and we were convinced they were the best. We would make allowances for the uninitiated, but only so far. This family-wide quirk, not unnaturally, eventually got on her nerves. After one too many times when someone redid or improved on something she had done, she took a deep, theatrically mournful breath, the quintessential heavy sigh, and on the exhalation said,

" Failed again."

I'm not sure how the other family members reacted the first time they heard her, but I know I had to laugh. Honestly, did it really matter which rags were used on the floor or the windows. Or whether you wiped the kitchen table before you swept? (Okay, I totally get the rags thing - old t-shirts for windows, old towels for floors. Trust me. It really is better. Missing a few crumbs because you swept first? Maybe not so much.)

"Failed again." It became something of a mantra. It was certainly quickly picked up by Their Father and I still get to hear it anytime I go off on a rant about doors let slam and tissues not making it to the wastepaper basket. (You don't want to know about the time there were four tubes of toothpaste going simultaneously.) (Well, really. Four? At once? There are only five people in this household. If the toothpaste went on a road trip, how hard would it have been to return it to the medicine cabinet? Four open tubes of toothpaste. At the same time. Sheesh.)

All of which goes to explain what happened here with my excellent intention to NaBloPoMo. "Failed again."

November is also National Knit a Sweater Month. And no, I'm not even tempted. I have three sweaters on my needles as it is. I don't need to cast on another one while I ruthlessly abandon them.


It's just a swatch. (She said with all the conviction of one perilously close to jumping over the edge and sliding, gleefully, down the slippery slope)

'Nuff Said

It matters.