Sunday, August 28, 2005

Feel the Love

Yarn is my comfort food. Whenever I’m feeling overwhelmed with work deadlines or weighed down by household worries, I can pick up my latest project, pat my most-recent yarn purchase, or just thumb through the current Knitter’s magazine and feel a sense of calm. But like too much comfort food can lead to heavy hips and a double chin, too much yarn and too many unfinished projects can also make me feel overstuffed.

So yesterday, I tidied the coffee table, gathered up all the single socks waiting for mates, all the notions and notebooks with project details, all the pattern books and magazines. I did a little organizing of my stash and realized there is enough wool in this house to keep me full for months.

Motivated by Marguerite, I will try to limit myself to only two projects at a time, one for home and one for the train. Life is too short to actually go on a yarn diet. I can’t give up my lunchtime trips to Windsor Button and I surely am not strong enough to resist the perky email announcements from KnitPicks about their newest yarn and free shipping. But, I will try to finish up some of the larger projects in my stash before starting anything new. The eternal Debbie Bliss Jacket will now be my home project and it will be done by October. Socks will continue to be my commuting project.

So, from out of the plastic bins and bags, came the Debbie Bliss, needing less than one sleeve and a hood. Out came a rumpled print out of Grumperina’s instructions for cabling without a cable needle. A few rows in, and the pattern and technique started to feel familiar again, like getting together with an old friend. Do you ever have that feeling of absolutely loving to knit? That’s how I feel whenever I work on this sweater. Maybe that’s why I’ve let it drag on for so long. I don’t want the fun to end. Does that make sense?

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