Lesson number 1: That I have a horrid attention span, and that unless I have some sort of plan or conscious schema in place, I rarely accomplish the things I set out to do that fall outside of my day to day duties as an admin assistant/receptionist and as a wife.
Lesson number 2: That when I inevitably let goals/projects slide as a result of Lesson number 1, I get frazzled easily and am much more likely to just throw my hands in the air and inwardly yell, "F--- it"; letting my knitting projects and my book review fall by the wayside.
Lesson number 3: That when I drink, I like to put googly eyes on things.
With that being said, I am going to be setting some solid goals for myself as far as my book review goes. As I've written earlier, unless I light some kind of fire under my bum, this book review WON'T get finished.
I'm finding myself really struggling with CAMD chapter seven. I've done a couple of drafts of the review that just don't seem to work very well; mostly because both of my attempts at the review ended up being overly formulaic and subsequently boring. I find that many of my reviews as of late are looking like this:
1. Orenstein presents an idea,
2. I riff and ramble a bit on whether or not I like said idea for whatever reason.
My clumsy and poorly thought out review attempts, to put it bluntly, sucked. They unfairly represented a piece of very insightful and challenging writing as being overly-basic (SEXY ADULT GOOD, SEXY 12-YEAR OLD BAD!), accusatory (WHY DO YOU GUYS PREY ON CHILD STARS??? WHY??), and banal (LOLOL LINSAY LOHAN!). Chapter seven (and this can be said for the entire book) of Cinderella Ate My Daughter is none of these things, and until I get the review just right, I'm going to hold off on publishing it.
For now, I've got a goal in mind for my CAMD reviews: I want to finish reviewing the book by July.
Now that THAT'S out of the way, I have a confession to make.
I relapsed, Readers.
I bought some yarn.
But I assure you that I have a very good reason! Please hear me out!
I work in the admin department of a very large company as the "PM Receptionist". Besides myself, there are three other receptionists (two who work during the early morning, and one other that works in the evening with me), who for the purpose of anonymity will be referred to as Snap, Crackle and Pop.
Snap, Crackle and especially Pop are well aware of (and are VERY supportive of) Project Using Up the Stash. While chatting on our coffee break last week, Pop pulled me aside and gave me a request:
Pop: "Hey, Jackie, are you still looking for ways to use up your yarn?"
Me: "Yup!"
Pop: "You know those black finger-less gloves you wear all the time? The ones with the twisties?"
Me: "Yeah?"
Pop: "I love those gloves! Could you knit me a pair, but make them a little bit longer?"
Me: "Absolutely!"
I sent her a link to the pattern of the gloves in question, along with a couple of similar patterns from Ravelry. We picked a pattern (slightly different from my gloves, but longer in the cuff and more ornate) and I dug through my stash, looking for the yarn I used.
The next day, I came into work a little bit early so I could bring the yarn to Pop for approval.
Her eyes lit up when I showed her the skein (it was Cascade Yarns Heritage Sock), but as she looked over the yarn label, her face fell a bit.
Pop: "Oh...I don't think this will work."
Me: "Hm? Is it the wrong color?"
Pop: "No, the color is beautiful. It's just that I'm allergic to wool!"
Readers, the glove pattern we picked calls for a fingering weight yarn, and all of the fingering weight yarn in my stash has some kind of animal fiber in it. I don't want Pop's gloves to make her to break out into a rash!
I made a promise to Pop that I intend to keep, Readers. So, I had to choose between breaking my resolution and breaking my promise.
I relapsed and bought some imported Italian cotton in a gorgeous shade of blue-gray.
 |
| I figured that if I were going to buy some yarn, I may as well get GOOD yarn. |
I have to admit that I seriously underestimated how much yarn was in each ball (I ended up getting 3). Pop is going go get TWO pairs of gloves, and I'll use whatever is leftover to work on my duplicate stitch skills.
In addition to the two pairs of finger-less gloves, I've been working on using up my sock yarn stash. One sock has been finished:
The sole is a bit short, but HOLY SH-- this may be the only hand-knitted garment I own that I will proudly wear to work:
I love this lace pattern!
So, Readers, I'm going to hunker down and try to document all of the "Use up the yarn in my stash" projects I've got going on, in the hopes of organizing my goals a bit better:
1. Socks: 1/2 finished
2. Gloves for Pop: 1/2 finished
3. New snowflake pattern (!!): Almost finished, need to add some beading to the flake (as well as make a whole new one, since I accidentally spilled coffee on the working prototype I've got going).
4: Space Invaders Warm Up America square: Finished the chart, but have yet to begin.
All right! All that I have to do now is to hunker down and FOCUS!
Until next time, Readers!
No comments:
Post a Comment