Patience, My Little Grasshopper

It's no surprise to me that I have no patience. I've lived with myself for as long as I can remember -- and I've never had any.

So why now, as I've taken up knitting these past few months, did I expect anything else?? Let's look at my cardigan. What did I say recently? "I should finish the sleeves in about a week."


Um. This is how "complete" my cardigan sleeves are today. And we're way past the one week mark.

Is it a patience thing? Or a stupidity thing? Or a combination of both?

Let's tackle stupidity first:

To knit the sleeves, once you start decreasing, the circumference gets too small to continue with one pair of circulars. So you add a second pair. (Or you can go with dpns, but supposedly two sets of circulars are easier.) Easier? If this is easy, knitters may soon require PhDs to call themselves "knitters..."

No exaggeration -- I frogged the same 7-10 rows of knitting in the round with two sets of circulars AT LEAST 10 times. The yarn was getting thread-bare. I even went back to my LYS for help. And continued to frog even after getting help.

Now let's tackle patience.

While at the yarn store for yarn "instructions" last week, Norma and I did a little yarn purchasing, too.

She bought Rowan Biggy Print to knit a scarf called Pia. I bought some Rowan Big Wool because I wanted to make a cute sweater vest called Click-Clack to wear over a long-sleeved white t-shirt. Both came from Rowan's Big Wool Just Got Bigger pattern book.

The next day Norma sends a photo to my cell phone of her progress on the scarf.



My patience with my constantly-being-frogged-sleeve wore thin. I thought to myself: "Self, look how much progress Norma has made in less than 24 hours. You could knit up that big wool vest in NO TIME, feel accomplished, then go back to your hateful sleeves."

Yes. Of course I could. Because I'm neither stupid nor impatient. Or so I thought.


Impressive, no?

No.

The back is too long and the edging stitches are all screwed up so it will need to be redone from the armholes up. The front has now been frogged twice. Maybe three's a charm?

So thanks to my knitting stupidity and lack of patience, here I sit with two uncompleted sweaters and no feeling of accomplishment. Thankfully, I finally did get the hang of the double circulars. And while it's no speedy Gonzales process, I really can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

And Norma?


Wearing her completed Pia scarf.

Rumor has it, she's considering purchasing more Biggy Print for yet another. Which I'm sure she'll finish before either my cardigan or my vest...