Spinning, Knitting, Crocheting, Organic Gardening, Living off-grid, and chasing sheep - because- I'm, like, NOT SANE!

Monday, April 09, 2007

Wee Knots`

Urgh. Not enough knitting time over the weekend to get me going this Mun-day. Instead, I spent the weekend getting my dye area ready, trying to both help hubster and stay out of his way as we opened up the kitchen wall in preparation of moving into the 'addition' which just really gives me a kitchen of respectable size. So, as you can see, having one's kitchen gutted and them re-assembled (okay, only half re-assembled) is just not conducive to 'letting the creative juices flow'. So, as if to punish myself, I retrieved the 'Mermaid Shawl' from its hiding place and set myself to working on LACE, for creep's sake.

Lace knitters, do not mis-understand me I rub myself all over it whenever I can and make a moaning sound that appears to disturb others love lace! I just hate KNITTING it. And, I think I know why. Lace knitting requires the one skill I lack to being a superwoman in my own right. Perseverance? No, I have that in ample supply - you need only look at my goofy lifestyle to ascertain that I regularly set myself on a path that requires both stupidity and perseverance to endure. Love of endless counting and the high stress of knowing that you lack the intelligence to GO BACK and keep your place should you make ONE WRONG MOVE? Nah, three kids, a farm, a hubster that is like all those things rolled up into a person who, thankfully, never leaves the toilet seat up - have shown me, over time, that chaos is my anthem. It's patience, people. And I lack it in a big way.

Kinda funny since my career paths (even as an insane stay-home mom, farmer, off-gridder, knitter monster) have always required much in the way of my limited patience. Back when I taught reading, my students used to note that when I was getting frustrated, my voice would become very calm, but my eyebrows would start twitching. This is when the good kids at the table would start forcing their peers to shape up. I never meant to be scary....I'm just mental like that. Kinda like the time, a few years back, when Thing 3 and I were working on learning the alphabet. He was a wierd one. He picked up MOST of the letters very early - but the ones he didn't - took for freakin' ever! After many games, strategies, tools, tricks and, perhaps mom should have had another cup of coffee, we set to work on the difference between two letters he frequently confused. He confused them again. I not only began to twitch but stutter as well. A-freakin'mazing that this kid could tell me the symbolic meaning of the tree of Gondor but he couldn't remember an F? Isn't this letter used often enough in common (or trashy) speech? I had to put myself in time out. Thankfully, he never forgot 'F' again - but we all still laugh ,at my expense, about the day teacher cracked.....

Lace brings me there. Blind patience - it demands. Carry on knitting this fine string with these small needles into something that looks like a giant nubby thing in PERFECT TRUST that it will be beautiful. Am I so jaded and skeptical that I no longer believe in defying the odds that something that looks like crap the whole time you knit it will eventually make women like myself embarrass themselves in public? I knit on. I'm half-way through the sets of feather and fan for the base square. I am full on doubt and low on coffee. Course, my mood could be greatly improved if we didn't have a gargantuant amount of snow on the ground.