knitting the bad weather blahs away....

Its cold outside, (a high of 55 degrees F) and misting rain at the moment. I reluctantly opened my eyes this morning and ever since, it has been a grey, ugly, sleepy, do nothing kind of day. I should be painting my living room, or probably even dusting. I should be planning which furniture to move into the front room (or perhaps even attempting to move said furniture myself) so we can tile the floor in the back room. I could and should be doing at least one or all of those things.

Instead, I found myself sitting here knitting this sock. While working the gusset, I began thinking of picking up an old unfinished knitting project and actually FINISHING it. It is an almost-sweater that I put down when my grandfather died last year. At the time, it required too much concentration and effort to complete, so I left it on the needles and walked away. Funeral planning, and grieving took precedence. To make a long story short, here I am now feeling once again ready to take it up and finish it.

Ironically, the sweater is for my grandmother. It is my first ever sweater, and I'm a perfectionist. I'd rather take as long as I need to than hand her an ugly monstrosity. That sort of gift was lovely and cute when I was 7, but I just can not bring myself to give her a hand made gift like that now. I really would prefer to give her something she would actually use, and not just wear because her granddaughter knitted her something.

I chose her to be the first-sweater-ever recipient because she was the one who needed the most spiritual support when I decided to knit it. My knitting is my equivalent of attending church. It is my version of spiritual meditation/contemplation. If I knit for you, I feel that I'm sending my spiritual energy toward you in the form of a knitted gift. I don't care who thinks it is silly, it is my belief.

I refuse to knit items for kids when I'm in a bad mood. Call me crazy, but I feel doing so would contaminate the item with bad energy. I put down a prayer shawl for the same reason. I hated the pattern, so I left it on the needles. I couldn't knit a prayer shawl with "I-hate-this-pattern-I-wish-I-was-done-with-this stupid project!!" energy. That ain't so good for a prayer shawl, kind of counter productive. That energy seems better suited for knitting the vitriolic-shawl-of-utter-contempt. I'll have to create a pattern for that. Gawd, wouldn't that be ugly?

A prayer shawl is meant to be knitted with positive healing energy right? When the knitting of the prayer shawl turns into F*** YOU!! energy, it is time to walk away. Obviously, the shawl in question is still sitting, on the needles, in my great bag of unfinished projects.

I really want to finish that sweater for my grandmother. As soon as these socks are done, I'm going to conquer that unfinished project. My unfinished project bag, aka The Bag O' Black Hole knitting projects is going to be a little bit lighter. Maybe when it's done I'll actually have enough motivation to post a picture or two.