ambition

What have I been doing that's so important it prevented me from posting to this blog? Where have I been?

I've been staring at this.

I love that sweater. I have been reading the pattern, thinking, "I could do that." I've been planning to buy lots of yarn when we're in the U.S. next month. I've been thinking about which size to make, and what colors I'll use. Picturing myself wearing it, imagining the looks of wonder on people's faces when they ask me "Wherever did you get that fabulous sweater?" and I reply, "Oh, this? I made it."

What stands in my way? Several things.

First, this.

I've been working on, actually, two of these. The first, knit with leftover yarn from a shawl I made and affectionately known as the "test penguin," was supposed to be the one in which I could make my mistakes so that the second one, knit with special fuzzy yarn I bought the last time we were in Singapore, could be just right and incredibly cute.

Ah, to dream the impossible dream.

I finished the knitting for the test penguin. Not so hard! It involved several techniques I've never used before, but all was well. I followed the directions and lo and behold, I had a penguin in pieces. All that was left was to sew it together.

Yeah, "all that was left." Suffice it to say that I've got a sad dismembered flat test penguin, parts of which are gruesomely partially attached with ugly Frankenstein stitches that don't line up.

There must be a right way to sew pieces of a penguin together, but I don't know what it is. And therein lies the first obstacle to making that gorgeous sweater: if I can't sew together a freakin' tiny little penguin, imagine the agony of not being able to sew together the pieces of a sweater that will have taken me MUCH longer to knit. I would have to put the sad sleeves, the sad front, the sad back, the sad sash, and the sad collar in a box and admit defeat.

I'm considering staples.

The second obstacle to making that sweater is guilt. Since being in Thailand I have knitted a shawl, a challah cover, a long skinny piece of lace (because I wanted to learn how to do lace), a mouthpiece cover, a REALLY TOO BIG useless first attempt at a mouthpiece cover, and NOT an afghan for Brother and Sister-in-law. The afghan languishes for want of yarn (and I'll admit, for the undesirability of knitting something so big it has to drape over my lap, when it's so hot out) but it's not far from my thoughts. By rights it should be my next project.

The guilt doesn't stop there. Husband, who has bemusedly watched me progress from pot holders to a shapeless, unwearable scarf; thence to a quite serviceable shawl and to a fancy if extraordinarily ugly challah cover, has noted my mastery of the rectangle and the triangle. He has asked me to knit him a cardigan. It will, I think, help him to feel like an academic. So after the afghan I really ought to knit a sweater for him, not for myself.

And yet...

And yet...

But alas, it's all moot, because I don't know how to sew the freakin' pieces together.