It's not you, it's me...

I have had case of FADD lately (Fiber Attention Deficit Disorder). I keep starting new projects at a far greater rate than I am finishing them. This gave me pause this morning to run through my unfinished objects and try to put them in some sort of context.

I’ve heard people say that they “love” this project or they’ve “fallen out of love” with that project. Putting it in those terms, I have decided to list my projects in universal terms of old loves and new loves…

I went out this last weekend with a friend to a yarn store an hour away to celebrate their deer hunting sale. For those of you not in the know about these things, there are certain times of the year in certain locations across this country when large masses of people take to the woods to kill things. The majority of times, those people in the woods are of the male persuasion, but not always. (I personally have two female friends who kick ass in the hunting department-Hi Sara and Anne!) I don’t hunt but neither do I have anything against hunting. (I think if you hunt you should eat what you kill, not hand it on the wall-just my opinion.) The upside of the carnage is that stores catering to a mostly female population have a tendency to hold sales on hunting weekends. This was such a sale…

It was while standing amidst the fiber bounty that was all 25% off that I became tempted and then I fell…

Now, I am normally attracted to bright colors and wild fibers so when I started touching the browns and beiges, I knew I was doing something terribly wrong. I had loved ones at home…I needed to give them my attention…it was oh so wrong. But it was 25% off…all I can say is that it was like having a coupon at a whore house…

I brought various browns, beiges, and kicky golds home and I started this:

It is my newest love. It is wild. It is dangerous. Very few people will understand my interest; they’ll accuse me of having a mid-life crisis. They will say that I’m too old for this. I will complete this scarf within the next two days because I am giddy with infatuation. I’ll embellish the fringe with beads and I’ll wear it with a secret satisfaction that no one understands but me. My husband will refuse to be seen in public with me when I’m wearing it.

Here is the single sock that I have completed with beautiful yarn from Dave Daniels. I was knitting two socks at the same time when I started these, one out of rather rough self striping yarn and this sock. I buckled down and knit the second self striping sock first because I didn’t like the yarn and was in danger of not knitting the second sock. Now, I have this beautiful sock with beautiful yarn staring at me. It is feeling wounded and sad. It is the spurned lover that never really did anything wrong and often did things very right…it just came along at an inconvenient time…like when you went off to college and lost touch somehow.

Here is the Tom Tom Jacket that I started out of donated Bartlett’s for our Charitable Crafters group. I love Bartlett’s yarn. I love it’s sheepy smell and the lanolin I get on my hands when I knit with it. This was my second Elizabeth Zimmerman project and due to the mind numbing nature of garter stitch, I threw a mosaic panel on the back. Unfortunately, it is off center by two stitches. Will the child that receives this really care? Will it fail to keep them warm because of my calculating error? Of course not, but it isn’t perfect, or even close. This is the boy you dated in college that was desperately nice but horribly awkward. He took you out to dinner, held the door open, and you even took him home for Thanksgiving when he lived too far from his own home. But his infatuation with SCA, science fiction of all stripes, and his discomfort around other humans doomed the relationship to failure. You told him it wasn’t his fault, it was you… or something equally dreadful…

This is the sweater I started at the beginning of this year. It is the oldest unfinished object I have. Normally if I have something idle on the needles for more than three weeks, I rip it off and reclaim the yarn. This is the boy that was also your friend. He is the one that you went to high school with and had a TON of things in common with. You ate pizza together, watched movies, and laughed until you shot Pepsi out your nose. You loved him like the cool brother you never had and if you EVER tried to take the relationship to the next level and he wasn’t interested, you knew that it would never be the same. So you did nothing. You gave him a hug at high school graduation and watched him walk out of your life. He’s married now to a really nice girl from your graduating class and they have kids older than your own. Whenever you think of him, you get all wistful and hope that he his happy…

Next, we have some beaded yarn that I am spinning on my Louet. This would be that cute neighbor boy that must have wonderful parents because he's just such a neat kid. Someday, you hope your daughter will find a nice boy like that...

This is the sweater I am working on for my son. It is also an Elizabeth Zimmerman “percentage system” sweater. It is all one color, knitted to meet the uniform requirements of my son’s school. I am knitting it because it was requested, not because I wanted to. In other words…I HATE THIS SWEATER!
This is the destructive relationship that we have all had in our lives at one time or the other. This is the boy that either seemed dangerous and exciting when you first met or perhaps simple and sweet, and you declared your undying love for each other. You moved in with each other, you bought pets, you played house keeper. His parents hated you because you were “common”. Your parents hated him because he was a “rich boy”. Can it be any more romantic than that? Do I hear lines from Romeo and Juliet? And then you learned about his shoplifting habit and his political affiliations and how he thought that women belonged at home with the children and you were so blind that you tried to write it all off and you told yourself that it would all work out somehow. And then he cleaned out your bank account and cheated on you. In other words…this turned out to be the self destructive relationship that taught you the sweet burning wrath of pure blinding hate…Not that I’d know anything about it mind you, I just hate this freakin’ sweater!

I will finish this sweater by the end of the week or else I will go on a multi-state shooting spree. Please keep checking CNN to see the outcome. No news, as they say, is good news.

And this is the project unlike all the others…it is the quilt that I started a few months ago and I am planning on working on again this coming Saturday. This is that experimental phase you went through in college. You know, with that sexy roommate of yours in college? Yeah, you know the one…the girl your mother never met?

So there, all of my unfinished objects put into terms that everyone (or almost everyone) can understand…Oh, and here is my last big finished project just so you won't see that I am a total loser...here are my Elizabeth Zimmerman "leggings". I use them to lounge around the house in my "Fiber Diva" pose.

And in case you were wondering what my "craft" table looks like? Honest to God, here it is...the skull? All that remains of the last family member that was waiting for me to mend their pants.