Progress Report

Learning new things is work. Finding my way through some new task, understanding and then becoming competent at it, takes effort, even if it's mostly mental, not the sweaty, dirt-under-the-fingernails type of effort. That's not a bad thing. The truth is it's satisfying to arrive at the point of mastery, or even competency. You'd think I might have realized that sooner in my life, but some of these light bulbs take a while to come on.

Working on this sweater has shown me how much I procrastinate when it comes to learning something new. And that, I realize, has to do with fear of failure, or, to be more accurate, fear of messing it up irretrievably. There's nothing like a deadline to move me past that fear and into action, so I gave myself a deadline in order to get on with this (way overdue anyway) project. Deadline is fast approaching, and I probably won't have the sweater completely done and in Erin's hands by tomorrow. Haha! But it's in the home stretch! There were three new, potential-obstacle points for me in this project - joining a second skein and knitting off both separately in the shoulder/neck area, the three-needle bind-off for the shoulders, and picking up stitches to create the neckband (and later, the sleeves). I am past all three of these, and they've all worked out quite nicely. Hurray and hallelujah! Instead of the real name of this sweater pattern (Skully) I'm calling it Just Do It. Here are some pictures of it when in was essentially in the vest stage - joined at the shoulders, and with neckband in place, but no sleeves, and a closeup of the neckband.