When Life Gets In the Way

There was a time in my life when I believed that stress didn't exist. I even was dumb enough to say that to a group of people. I wasn't incredibly young; hell, I think I was in my mid-30s and Lord knows I had encountered my fair share of stressful situations: having children while still in college, finding out that one baby was really two, coming out of college in a recession, applying for Welfare . . . all pretty stressful. Still, I never really felt it.

But lately, stress is becoming a little more known in my life. Last year, several people commented, "You look like you've lost weight," which is always nice to hear. However, I knew it was coming from lack of eating properly. These days, I'll eat sometimes to stay awake if I am doing something that needs to get done . . . which isn't a good idea. Knitting has always provided a kind of stress relief for me. Even that, these days, is compounding the stress that I feel. The night before Thanksgiving, I decided that it was high time to finish one of my sweaters. I had plans to wear it to school the next week, and I knew that I needed to finish the sleeve . . . that's right, one little sleeve. I picked up the stitches but felt that something was wrong. See, on the other sleeve, I remembered the number configuration, and this sleeve was not the same. After some "heavy math" and questioning Dave about my calculations, I discovered that I had fucked up this sweater AGAIN. Seems that this time, instead of felting the damn thing, I put too few stitches on waste yarn for the sleeve. If you are a knitter, then you know that this type of thing is fixable by doing one thing: ripping it out. If you aren't a knitter, then think of something that you can't fix save for starting all over. Note that I said AGAIN. I won't bore you with the details, but you can read all about it here.

After a minute of dumb-founded confusion, I started crying. Dave came over and held my hand, telling me that it would be okay, but sometimes you just know. The Girls came back from a friend's house about that time. Later, they would tell Dave that they thought my father passed away. No, Grandpa is still kicking . . . but your mother is a knitting failure. I pulled out all of my easy knitting projects and decided to finish them since I needed that kind of "pick-me-up." I took the sweater to my Knit Night just to see what everyone thought. Pretty unanimous: rip the sucker and start over.

Honestly, if wool burned, I would have a pile of ashes right now instead of a bag full of shit.

Jill