I am back...I THINK!!

I do apologize that I went missing for so many days (weeks).

One of the reasons that I have never blogged before is that I always believed if you had a blog, you HAD to blog every day.  When I started this blog, I committed to myself that I would blog every day.  All good intentions aside, I did not take into account the curves that life tends to toss your way ever so often.  I have had a few weeks of life challenges that got in the way of doing anything especially this blog:

1. January 2 gifted me with a nasty, nasty cold that really knocked me on my fanny.  My friend warned me that I could catch the cold.  Since I have a really, really strong immune system, I didn’t listen to her.  I should have listened.  After a month, I am just now getting back to normal (??).
2. The next challenge has been more difficult and actually will be with me on some level for the rest of my life.  One Thursday afternoon at work, after 5 hours of meetings with my department manager, I started seeing weird things out of my left eye and it sort of hurt a bit, but not bad.  I thought it was due to the long hours staring at the computer screen and endless spreadsheets.  At knitting that night everyone seemed to think it was probably an ocular migraine.  Friday morning the weird sights and feelings were still there.  I was sure if it were a migraine it would have been gone after a night’s sleep, but I notified work I would not be in that day, took a pain pill and went back to bed.  I woke up several hours later with no change.  I called the eye doctor and they got me in right away.  Not a migraine.  Vitreous detachment.  The Vitreous is the gel that fills most of the eyeball.  With age, the gel gets watery and sometimes detaches from the back of the eye.  It is not life or sight threatening, but it could cause a retinal tear, which could be sight threatening. I should be out of danger of a retinal tear within a month of the occurrence.  I have an appointment for 2/14 for a recheck and we should know then exactly how things are going to be going forward.  I spent a week in a darkened room DOING NOTHING.  At first I tried putting a patch on my left eye and knitting.  It did not work out too well.  Found out that even with the patch whatever the right eye was doing was affecting the left eye. Right now my eye is only affected by floaters in the form of seeming like there is a mud splat on my glasses.  I keep cleaning my glasses, but the splat never goes away.  I have started to seriously knit again and think things are pretty much settled into the new normal.

Thanks to my physical challenges, I am seriously behind in my knitting and need to work 24/7 for a year to get caught up.  In other words, I am never going to get caught up; I just have to move on.  For now, I am not working on my knitting courses until I complete some items that people are waiting for.  I do plan to get back to the courses as soon as I can as I have several I want to complete and then I can be even more anal (read to the end to see what I am referring to).

The day that I knit with one eye, I completed the Lollipop Cabin pants I had been working on.  I really did not like the way the legs tapered and could not bring myself to proceed with blocking.  Those pants were interfering with my knitting.  I would go to knit something and those dang pants were haunting me.  It got to the point there was no knitting going on in this life.  Anyone who knows me knows that is NOT GOOD.  Monday evening, I told myself it was time to fish or cut bait.  There was a big to-do at last Thursday night knitting involving a young, new knitter that had a MAJOR ERROR in a project that she chose to ignore and plow through to get the project completed.  I kept my thoughts to myself, but I did slap myself around with them over those pants.  I gave myself a pep talk, bit the bullet and ripped out 3 ½ inches to where I felt the taper went wonky.  It was a good decision and I managed to get one leg nearly back to where it was.  They will soon be complete and to my satisfaction.  I feel better about the pants and myself.

Okay, this brings me to my self opinionated knitting thoughts/advice for today:

If it is worth doing, it is worth doing right even if you have to go back and rip out a completed project.  I don’t care who you are, what you are knitting or how small the project or error……  FIX THE DANG THING!!!!  In my personal opinion overlooking a flaw in your work shows a flaw in you and your skills.  Being able to recognize and fix your errors shows growth in you and your skills.  Sometimes you can fix without ripping out and sometimes ripping out is the only solution.  Another thing you will learn is to PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU ARE DOING.  Probably, if you were paying attention, you may not have made the mistake in the first place (not always the case, but often).  If you are working on a project that has lots of details and “holes” or “twist”, then make sure you pay attention to what you are doing.  Unless you have the ability to tune out things around you and pay attention to just what your are doing then I would say a detailed, complicated project is not a good choice to work on at your weekly knitting group or when the kids are running wildly around terrorizing you and the house.  My grandmother taught me how to embroidery when I was a small child.  The most important thing she taught me was the inside should ALWAYS look as good as the outside.  I have always applied this rule to everything I have done in my life since.  Most people label me as “anal” and I admit that I am (my own daughters could never learn anything from me due to my being so anal about things needing to be perfect; they learned after they were grown and away from me).  Yes, I fix even the TINY flaws/errors, if I can find them.  To be perfectly honest, I am personally offended whenever I see a completed project with obvious flaws and to be honest a totally shoddy piece of work.  It is NOT MY PROBLEM.  The problem belongs to the person who made the project and the error, but it still offends me.  Yes, I do admit this is a major flaw in me and I am trying to learn to let things go; some days I can, other days I fail.  There is surly a “happy medium” between my intense anal attitude about the finished project and the “I don’t care, I just want to get this done” attitude of some others.  However, as for me and my projects, I will continue to be anal.  Just one more thing, for those who say being so anal takes the joy out of knitting or whatever you are doing….. NO, not for me, my joy is producing as perfect an item as I can.  Having an inferior, shoddy product takes away my joy.

Okay getting off my soapbox now.  I do hope you are all enjoying what you are doing and that you are producing beautiful, flawless family heirlooms.

Go forth and knit!

I pray you are all always happy, blessed, loved and healthy.

Have a God filled day,

V