So I'm really weird. Sometimes I can go for months - nay, years - without ever really taking a hard look at what projects have been in progress forever and are probably never going to get done. Sometimes it takes me two years to give up on a project, during which time it will just sit around shoved in a basket somewhere. I don't include these projects on Ravelry. They're my dirty little yarn secrets.
Recently, this has been changing. I am suddenly going crazy with the realization of how many I'm-never-going-to-finish-this-who-am-I-kidding projects I have. So I've been going through them, one by one, and taking a long hard look at what they are and why they don't work. I've already ripped out two socks in progress that were a) too small or b) too long in the leg, to the point that I was going to run out of yarn on the second. And I knew that there was no way I was going to use leftovers from another project to finish them off. Not gonna happen, and I shall explain why:
I know there's several sayings that endorse leaving imperfections or mistakes in handmade objects, that it makes them more meaningful and/or holy. And just as I laugh bitterly when non-knitters tell me how patient I am - since I am pretty much the opposite of patient; you should try driving with me and see! - I just can't get over mistakes in my knitting, period. I have zero problems with other people subscribing to this ethos; I will happily accept any item made with love and never ask whether or not it has any mistakes... but I am way too neurotic to adopt it myself.
For some things, like picking up 2 too many stitches on the pick-up-and-knit row, I have no problem shutting my brain off and doing a couple of k2togs on the next row. But visible mistakes, stupid things that I should have seen but didn't because I got too cocky about what an awesome-ass knitter I am and pfft who needs to read charts anyhow... those give me an aneurysm. They shall not stand.
That brings me to Kai-Mei. I wasn't sure whether it was one of those Do Not Pass Go projects or not. I started them in January, knit 6 inches of the leg, and promptly dropped them for something newer and shinier. Actually, there was some question about their size: I wasn't sure if they were charmingly not-too-snug in the leg, or if they would fall down to my ankles if I looked at them sideways. Add in the beginning of my senior semester and my epic laziness (but putting lace on the instep might be haaaaard, I thought), and they were unceremoniously crammed into my UFO basket.
So when I got to them this last week, I was sort of perplexed by the fact that I had almost half of a sock done; not only that, but it was the super boring part that I had already finished. I tried them on. They fit perfectly. So I knocked out the last half-inch of the leg and the foot of the sock in about two days.
The pattern: written beautifully. The honeybee lace pattern: divine. The yarn: tightly twisted and a dream to work with. The amount of embarrassment over how long it took to accept a perfectly nice and good sock instead of squirreling it away like an self-conscious teenager shoving an intarsia Santa sweater into the bottom of her sock drawer:
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