Thursday, January 20, 2011

Panic Not

Some of my readers are wondering if I have a terminal illness or a premonition of pending doom because I picked the title Before I Sleep.  Rest assured I have no knowledge of anything like that.  I picked the name because I have miles and miles of yarn to use up before I kick off.

My initial burst of speed got me down to 27 UFOs and I am working on #26.  I started it perhaps 5-7 years ago and it is on #2 needles and in silk I scrounged from a dye sample class.  There are perhaps 80+  two yard pieces of a slightly textured silk in 80+ colors.  When I started the project I would stop and choose the next color as each piece ran out. I was thinking I would graduate the colors from one end of the scarf to the other.  I put in a square of a contrasting color here and there to try to tie it all together and add some serendipity.   Now it is many years later, and I want to actually finish this sometime this decade, so I spent 2 days knotting the yarns together in the order I wanted and then wound them into a ball.  My decisions already having been made, I am making progress on it at a faster rate (faster being a relative term: think skinny yarn on #2 needles and entrelac).  When the ball turned out to be about 4" in diameter I realized that I have a LOT of yarn to go to finish this.  That's a good thing since it may actually turn out long enough to be a scarf.

Meanwhile, I knit a Wonderful Wallaby hoodie for my grandson Erik and have been cutting up old shirts to use in a bathmat.  I started to feel like I was trapped into finishing all 29 projects before doing anything else and that was crazythinking.  I can work on whatever I want to work on.  I tend to paint myself into corners to force myself to do stuff and this should be fun.  I need to take a good look at everything and decide if I even want to still do them.  Ravelry and blog reading has given me many more ideas and if I want to move forward I need to jettison some of the baggage I am dragging along behind me.  This applies to more than just fiber.  My whole life is up for re-evaluation.

This must be a facet of having just retired.  What are my interests, priorities, etc.?  What do I want to spend my time doing?  Everyone knows that our time line on earth shrinks a bit every day and we don't know how far ahead the cliff is.  I plan to do more 'wants' and fewer 'have-tos' (I have no idea how one should spell that).

Pictures to follow.  I still haven't taken the time to figure out how to add them.  I actually haven't even taken them yet.  I'm still in the early organizational stage of both this retirement and this blog. I've also  started reading again.

3 comments:

  1. Wow! And to think I have 3 UFOs. I am humbled!

    And figure out how to put in the pictures!

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  2. I figured all the time was mine so indulged myself with interests that had been languishing. Now I find I'm busier than when I worked. It occurs to me that a job really is only 45 hours out of a week.

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  3. ...And I look forward to see that scarf during Show & Tell at the guild, maybe in the fall? You're right to concentrate on the "wants" in your life. The "have-tos" will get themselves done, too, of course.

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