steady

Completely secular post today. Even holiday free, in case you are looking for a respite.

The song that came to mind for this word was "Telephone Hour" from the musical Bye Bye Birdie. Sorry. I spent the whole day singing "Hello Mr Henkel, this is Harvey Johnson. Can I speak to Penelope Ann?" Luckily (for them) no one else was home today.

I also spent the day trying to finish this blasted yellow cotton sweater. The yarn was purchased on close out, because the pattern book was $1. As I have discovered, neither reason is a great basis for a project. I started it last July on vacation, and then put it down for quite a while. When I picked it back up again, I remembered the reason for abandonment: I knit the body too short (per the pattern, but not a good length for me). I should know by now that if a project is in hibernation, it's because I encountered a problem that I was too lazy to solve at the time. This makes picking it back up again doubly difficult, because (1) I have to figure out the problem all over again (never do I write it down) and then (2) actually solve the problem. Needless to say, this double-barreled issue is responsible for a lot of unfinished projects around here.

Since I re-picked it up, and frogged back to the point to restart knitting, I have tried to go steady with this project by knitting a little each day. I even put things like "knit one inch of sleeves" onto my to-do list so I would have the satisfaction of crossing it off, a bit at a time. I kept at it when I had other knitting projects demanding my time. I endured the sweat of nearly running out of this long-discontinued yarn, after knitting approximately one million little cables. Through it all, I tried to keep steadily plodding along.

I thought for sure today would be the day. All the pieces were dried and blocked. All of the ends from changing between skeins were knit in. The shoulders were seamed. The front band was picked up and I was at the point of putting in the buttonholes. I planned this post to be a inspirational message upon the value of working steadily so that you can finally achieve your goals.

Of course, I didn't finish the sweater today. Once again, I underestimated the amount of time I had available and the amount of work remaining to be done. Ever the optimist. The buttonholes (thanks to this great techknitter tutorial; the result is well worth the time it took me to figure it out) and buttonband are complete. One sleeve is attached and sewn together, and many seaming ends are sewn in, the perfect task to be done during Terzo's piano lesson.

I must give a shout out to this technique of using binder clips to set the sleeve in place. Once I got them all situated to my liking, sewing it together was a snap. My finished sleeve is perfectly centered on the shoulder seam, and the seam at the bottom of the sleeve also lines up the pattern very well. With the way the increases were worked with the busy stitch pattern, imperfection would be easy to spot.

So, one more sleeve to put in and sew together. Tomorrow's word is "hope."