Knitting

Procrastination is Motivation?

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My subconscious must be just perverse enough to make it difficult for me to blog unless by so doing, I am procrastinating on something else.

Actually, I think that’s why having a double major worked out so well for me in college. When I had a programming deadline, I could write a religion paper. With an essay due date looming, I could lose myself in endless lines of code. See? Perverse. Or contrary, at the very least.

I have no children to wrangle or job responsibilities to juggle, so this deployment has given me Time with a capital ‘T.’ It sloshes about the corners of my house, unused, in temporal eddies that could probably be used to fuel a couple of Star Trek plots. Some of my readers are no doubt gritting their teeth as they read this, thinking, “How dare she complain about having too much time on her hands! I could use an extra four hours just to keep entropy at bay.” If I could figure out a way to reallocate some of my superfluous hours to you busy folks, I’d be happy to oblige — just as long as I could reclaim them when my schedule eventually reverts to “bursting at the seams” mode.

Right now, though, with all this Time floating about, I’m having trouble generating the necessary internal pressure to sit down and write. I have ideas for SpouseBUZZ posts sitting woefully neglected and unexpanded-upon. I haven’t yet told you the story of my triumph over the recalcitrant lawnmower. ENS Wifey’s faithfully-produced MilSpouse Friday Fill-In questions have gone un-filled-in for weeks. My poor blog is parched, and I chalk it up to a lack of non-writing projects on which to procrastinate.

The solution, clearly, is to give myself some other assignments, undertakings to make typing seem a rejuvenating process and prose a refuge. To that end, I just ordered a cackle-worthy amount of yarn and made plans to embark upon my first large-ish lace project. (Hey, no one said my non-writing task had to be unpleasant — it just has to be Not Writing.) If my self-assessment is correct, knitting the way I will need to in order to finish this gift in a timely fashion (read: until cross-eyed and fumble-fingered) will make “sneaking off” to bang out a blog post seem deliciously like getting away with something.

Am I the only weirdo who procrastinates her way into productivity? I’d love to hear about any little tricks you use to fool yourself into getting things done.

To the Nth Facebook Page

Come on over and give me a 'Like,' if you so desire.

Speaking of procrastination, Facebook reigns as one of the greatest time sinks of all time, as it has since I was in college (you know, back in the days before middle schoolers and your grandmother were on it). It was only a matter of time before I joined the “Facebook Page for my Blog” party: To the Nth is now officially likable, social-networking-wise. Let me know if you have a page you’d like me to come visit!

Sock the First!

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I finished my very first sock last night, and it turned out sock-shaped and everything.

Sock the First

Two nights ago, I stayed up until midnight knitting because I got it into my head that I couldn’t possibly go to sleep until I finished the gusset decreases. Despite the late hour I retired, I awoke bright and early yesterday morning determined that I would have a completed sock off the needles and on my foot before going to bed that night.

And I did it!

New skills learned in the course of Sock the First:

  • Working with small-sized, stabbity DPNs (double-pointed needles)
  • Turning a heel
  • Picking up stitches
  • Kitchener stitch (for grafting the toe)

I had better cast on for Sock the Second real soon, lest I get distracted by some shiny new knitting project and wind up having a lonely sock forever pining for its mate (a feeling to which I can relate at the moment, alas).

Besides, my other foot is cold.

New Year, New… Socks?

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Once upon a time, I was not a knitter. (Bet you didn’t know  “once upon a time” meant “last summer,” did you?) With the help of a scrying pool that suspiciously resembled my MacBook, I studied the lore of needles, knits, and purls. With much trial and error was this arcane knowledge won, and with each error I expanded my vocabulary of, ah… magic words of the sort with which Sailors (and *cough* some of their wives, apparently) pepper their speech and mothers attempt to keep from the tongues of their babes.

I have knit long scarves, lace dishcloths, and cabled hats. I have knit woolly fingerless mitts and Navy uniform-spec watch caps. I have knit for myself and for gifts and for no real reason at all. While by no means a master of the craft, I believe I am vanishingly close to being able to claim the title of sorceress Knitter, with a capital ‘K.’

Only one thing stands in my way of my own self-perception of knitting accomplishment: a pair of socks.

For reasons obscure even in my own mind, I will not feel I have truly arrived in the knitting world until I complete my first pair of socks. For me, hand-knit socks carry a cachet that outstrips the apparent humbleness of a couple of modified tubes into which one jams one’s chilly feet. You knit and purl and knit and purl forever. Then, screwing up your courage, you perform the mysterious rite known as “turning the heel,” which to me really does appear to be a magic spell one casts with wands shaped like double-pointed needles. Then you knit some more, conjuring up something called a “gusset,” and before you know it, there sits before you a sock where once was only a ball of yarn.

I’m still in the “knit and purl forever” phase of my first sock.

Sock cuff, with many stabbity needles.

Two-by-two ribbing, on and on and on.

I am a little concerned that I might just keep knitting the cuff forever, for fear that I will thoroughly embarrass myself with a pitiful first attempt at turning the heel. Things might progress a wee bit faster, however, if I had a mite less “help” from the feline contingent.

Cat noms yarn. Yum.

Vera's possession of four paws does little to help her manipulate four DPNs, so she prefers to snack on the raw material instead.

Actually, I feel fairly well prepared (thanks to Silver’s Sock Class) to turn the heel and make a go at finishing Sock the First. It’s Sock the Second that worries me. After the sense of accomplishment that comes from learning the skills necessary to complete the first, will the lack of novelty make the second an exercise in drudgery? Will I be whining, “But I just did this. I don’t want to do it again yet!”

Come to think of it, I have the same questions about deployment. We are in the early days of our first one, and I can’t help but wonder if the fact that I don’t really know what to expect is a blessing. I have yet to experience the kinds of things that can go wrong, so I can focus on the novel aspects of this type of separation. I wonder if it hasn’t quite sunk in yet that I really and truly will not have my husband home with me for several months. I fear that after we get through all the new challenges this deployment will present, after the joyful rush of homecoming and after the comfortable routine of having our family on one continent again, that the inevitable preparations for his second deployment will be all the more difficult. I’ll know what I’m in for, and it won’t even be shiny and new.

All those are worries based on borrowed trouble, of course, and are probably best saved for later. Meanwhile, I need to get a move on if I want to have a completed pair of handmade socks to show off before we get too far into this deployment.