A Knitter’s Birthday Lament
My birthday was last week. It was full of celebration, including a long awaited banana split,
a corn dog and fries birthday dinner,
a perfect gift in a box of Cheez-Its, 
and a total surprise celebration by our Sip and Knit group at the shop, Northcoast Knittery. 
But, after the fun came a creeping realization, like the Northcoast fog that can be seen over the bay moving toward you relentlessly until you are totally submersed in a soaking drip. Your life will end before you can knit all the projects that beckon, work with all those beautiful yarns, test out all those knitting technique possibilities. Forlorn melancholy…wistful sighs…edging to the brink of despair…well, momentarily.
The only thing to do is just keep on knitting, and take a little bit of time to take stock of what one has recently completed over the last year. But truthfully, I can’t remember what all I’ve completed over the last year, and I hardly ever remember to post on Ravelry when I begin a project. (Note to self…begin to do this with each new project from now on.) Also, I can’t share with you three major knitting projects I designed and completed, because they are all designs to be published in the next two issues (Summer and Fall) of Love of Knitting. Nor can I share my latest design inspiration, because I am currently knitting it up for the winter issue of Love of Knitting. (But I can tell you that it was inspired by a sequence in the movie/muscial Phantom of the Opera!)
Lace Wrap, Pattern #28 in Vogue Knitting, Winter 2009/10
However, I can post a major accomplishment…this Lace Wrap from Vogue Knitting, Winter 2009/10. I am super pleased with it. It took me quite a while to finish it–about 18 months since it had to be put down to meet other knitting deadlines. It is knit in two rectangular pieces, one with 3 pattern repeats in the colorway repeats, and one with 2 pattern repeats in the colorway repeats. Then, the pieces are sewn together like an “L”. I used three colorways of Indigo Moon Yarns fingering weight, in a sequence of Color 1, Color 2, Color 3, Color 2, Color 1, Color 2, Color 3, Color 2, Color 1. That added a bit more length each piece. The front piece drapes dramatically, with the shoulder piece draped elegantly around shoulders. The pattern can be purchased individually from Vogue, linked here.
Three Colorways of Indigo Moon Hand-dyed Fingering Weight, Autumn Harvest, Northern Steppe, and Rhapsody
I think my birthday sobering sense of knitting time slipping away may have to do with having multiple projects going all at once. It just doesn’t seem like you’re making headway fast enough when you divide your time. Between you and me, as soon as I finish the men’s henley (I’m close—sewing together and adding the trim) for the shop, and the women’s pullover (I’m close–finishing off the cowl neck) for the shop, and the women’s rib vest (three-fourths complete) for my daughter and the banded crewneck sweater (by Brandon Mably) for me (working on the back, so still a ways to go), I’m going to pick one major project and one minor project at a time. No, really, I am.
(Damn, I just flipped past Josh Bennett’s men’s designs as I was putting up the Vogue issue…I’ve GOT to knit that blue-white-gray striped cardigan, and that hound’s tooth vest…)
The “One Major, One Minor” is a worthy ambition, and I did read something somewhere by someone and she pointed out that projects progress faster when you don’t set them down. (Duh.) Still, the only way to really make that work is if you put yourself in a space bubble, see no new media that leads to patterns, no new yarn and never talk to any other knitters and see the absolutely AMAZING thing they made with that innocuous yarn that sat for months in the corner of the shop that you originally blew off when it came in, but now you are having second thoughts about…Also, the only knitter I EVER met in all my years of knitting who only knit ONE THING AT A TIME, EVER, was, quite literally, nutso. Still, I promise not to say “I told you so” if you sneak in a sock project whilst knitting a vest and a hat.
Hey Sara…what I plan to do is keep a truly up to date, knitting queue, with 10 projects in it that really motivate me to move on to them! It will have to be something separate from my Ravelry queue where I tend to stick patterns that I want to remember, for whatever reason. Of course, “one major and one minor” would not include any project for the shop nor my design deadline projects. Wait! I’m back where I started!
OK, your reply made laugh out loud. And I do the same thing on my Ravelry queue, which is why it has 1616 projects in it,as of today.