Competition...But I can't stand NOT to...

Now, this is one of the more stupid things I do. Usually, I can talk myself out of it, but every so often I'm compelled to just barrel ahead full tilt.

Last year, Lyn mentioned to me that Luke could use a nice Christmas stocking. But, she made this request about two weeks before Christmas.

"No way!" I said.

So, this year, the knitting shop that gets far too much of my money offered a class on making Fair Isle Christmas stockings. Three classes, a couple of hours each. And, they were scheduled on Saturday afternoon, right after I got off work, so it was on the way home. I signed up.

As a word of explanation, Fair Isle is a technique of design that involves from one additional color to as many as you like. But, you only use two colors in any given row.

The course description said something along the line of "pick your main color and one or more additional colors". So, I picked out two colors, a main and one additional, figuring it was a new technique, so to learn to handle two colors of yarn at a time would be plenty.

The instructor is not the same one I had for my other sock class. She also seems nice, but seems to be just a tad on the snooty side, but that's no biggie - after all, most snooty folks I've come up against are actually snooty because of shyness.

Anyway, I started on my sock. One of the things you have to do with Fair Isle is chart your pattern out on a graph to make certain your pattern will come out even all the way around the sock. And, if you use any wording, you should fill in the rest of the circumference with some other design.

I figured this out because I DIDN'T do it.

And, amazingly enough, being the perfectionist that I can be, I actually let the mistakes be; I've been told that the Native Americans always try to leave a wee bit of a "mistake" in anything they craft, the reason, I believe is because perfection can make a person arrogant instead of humble. And, I like that analogy.

So, the mistakes stayed in place.

Anyway, the second class comes along. The assignment was to have at least 12 inches of sock finished, and we'd proceed with making the heel of the thing and proceeding forward to the end of the sock, and finish at the final class.

But, life, doing its usual thing prevented me from having as much time to knit as I'd hoped. I didn't even come close to having 12 inches of sock finished.

Ah well, I thought. I've made socks before - I'll just listen to the instructions and get caught up before the next class.

Then I went to class.

Perhaps I should mention my classmates. None of them work outside the home, and certainly none of them work two jobs. I'm sitting in the midst of them, chatting away about this knitting website and that technique and so on and so forth. And, they have time to research patterns, and colors and all that, and then proceed...and if they get stuck, they have time to come to the knitting shop other times beside class to ask questions. There is a part of me that does envy that.

But, that's not my life. Unfortunately, not having that life is what gets me into trouble with myself. Because when they pulled their socks out of their knitting bags to display, it was just as though someone dared me.

By the GODS, I can't let them get away with these gaily colored socks with five or six colors. It doesn't matter that they have all the time in the world and I don't. I'll MAKE time somehow.

This is the "I'll show you" phase of idiocy, you realize. Gets my ass into trouble more often than I'd like. The good part of it is without that function in my personality, I'd have never learned to camp, or use chopsticks, or go back to college or show dogs or, or, or...anyway, you get my drift.

So, my not-so-shabby project is going to be torn out and redone in more design and color.

Luke wouldn't care. He'd be tickled that his Grandma made his Christmas stocking. And it was the first one (And, it's possible it could be the last one, too!)

He won't care about the mistakes. He'll be far too interested in what might be IN the sock for the next few years. But Grandma can't stand it now that I've seen the others. I'm going to try to have something more elaborate than the simple thing I'd planned with only two colors. I'm going to go for more design and color.

Here are front and back pictures of sock number one.






So, this weekend will be one in which I intend to be firmly ensconced with yarn and needles. And, right now, I'm off to *gulp* pull the other sock off the needles and cast on the yarn for the new on.

Perfectionism, why must you keep rearing your ugly head?