After a fit of being determined to finish things, I seem to have fallen into a bout of startitis. (In all honesty, that fit of determination may not have been so much an actual fit of determination as it was habit resulting from a spell of knitting a bunch of things that had actually had deadlines and not just deadlines, but deadlines that were pretty close to each other, close enough that it was easy to fall into a pattern of saying to myself “Well. That’s off the needles, what needs to be finished next?” But, I digress). I blame September, season of wardrobe updates and new beginnings and change and potential…
On the one hand, the startitis is great. I have a new sock on the needles that is so addicting to knit that I’ve nearly completed the first sock after casting on three days ago, ripping out all my work, starting over, casting on again and spending all day yesterday at a Renaissance Faire (which was totally awesome, except that it was kind of ridiculously and uncomfortably hot. Thank goodness for gelato and cider). I have a testknit of a pattern that I want to release soon-ish on the needles, and a third sock occupying another set of my sock needles. I have a swatch and a plan for another garment… I’m just working on convincing myself that I can cope with magic loop, just this one time, because I really don’t want to buy two short circs that I will probably not use ever again and because dpns just wouldn’t work in this scenario.
I am still, despite all of this, making progress on the shrug, though progress is slow and really, there’s not much to show you that’s interesting. I think the only way to make it interesting would be to take photos of it as it grows on a day-by-day basis and compile them into some kind of time-lapse video and I’m just not that sort of diligent documentarian.
The point is, I’m hitting the doldrums. That point where you’ve come a long way, but there’s still a really long way to go. Long enough, in fact, that the end seems just beyond the horizon. (I think this is approximately the point where second sock syndrome hits for many a sock knitter, and I kind of wish it had a name for sweater knitters or lace knitters or knitters who knit anything other than a sock. Second sleeve syndrome? Forty percent blues?)
My solution: In an effort to exercise some of that determination that I must have hiding somewhere given that I actually finished every project that I cast on in July before mid-September, I decided that whatever else I work on, the shrug must progress at a rate of 2 inches per day before I work on other projects. It might mean slower progress than I’d have if I had a deadline or were a slightly more monogamous knitter with a slightly higher boredom threshold than the one I’ve been blessed/cursed with… but it also means there’s a real shot that I’ll finish this fall garment before the end of, well, fall.
2 inches. I can commit to that. Right?
