Recent Lessons

Lesson 1: Occam’s Sewing Razor

When the squeak on the sewing machine becomes so maddening, and the top thread is breaking every five minutes, before I stick my head into the partially dismantled, Running sewing machine, I should consider making sure that the needle is installed in the correct orientation.  That didn’t solve the squeak.  Still had to stick my head in the machine to find that.  But now I Know.  

Lesson 2:  My eyes are bigger than my hands

I am enamored of the art of much knitting.  Sometimes I see a really incredible design and I must try it.  Often it’s about Trying a particular technique, a particular decrease, a clever little design element.  Lately (i.e. for the past several months), the projects I have fallen in love with have been either large or complicated (or in two cases, both).  This all by itself slowed down the knitting considerably.  On top of that, I got myself into a sort finger/hand/wrist/arm/shoulder spiral that is difficult to get myself out of.  This brought the knitting to a screaming halt.  So there are three lovely, but oh so far from finished, big and/or complicated projects staring at me, begging to be finished, but I can knit no more than a few minutes a day, if that, without bringing about the need for icepacks and narcotics.  

This is not fun.  This is not right.  It has also led to more sewing than knitting this Christmas season.  

Also, these projects are also intended for other people.  Other people who know about them and hope to actually hold them in their hands someday.  I feel an obligation to finish them, which makes the knitting feel more like Work than like this cool hobby that I do because I get a little thrill from taking a long piece of string and knotting it just so over and over (and over and over) and Voila! Clever, three-dimensional, useful object!

So I have learned that I really do prefer simple designs that I can hold in my hands, carry in my wee bag.  That aren’t huge.  This is what I really really prefer.  Now, if I can just get through the big complicated things, so I can get to some small simple things.  

Lesson 3: Should vs. Could, a lesson from Billy Jean King

I saw some round-table discussion on You Tube or something.  Oh, I remember, it was from Oprah, and O was chatting with Billy Jean King, Maria Shriver, and Gloria Steinem.  I forget what they were talking about, but Ms. King said that one of the ways she overcomes stress and guilt and all such self-defeating sorts of thinking is to replace “should” with “could” when it pops up in her head.  I.e. I should scrub the fingerprints off of the lightswitch plate in the kitchen.  vs.  I could scrub the fingerprints….  “Should” is a do it or feel bad about it kind of word, whereas “could” is a word of potential and, more importantly, choice.  As in, I could choose to do it or not.  

I was thinking that the holidays should be happy.  Ding ding ding.  The holidays ‘could’ be happy.  Which is a weird one, because either one suggests that the holidays aren’t actually happy, when really they sort of are, but they’re also sort of stressful.  But the source of that stress may be trying to live up to some idealized fantasy of what it ‘should’ be.  If we consider the idealized fantasy as something that ‘could’ be if we had infinite time and resources and and and, it becomes much easier to let that ideal go and still be satisfied with what the holidays actually are.  Which in my case, is a time when I get together with at least some of the people that I dearly love, or at least touch base with many of the important people in my life.  

More people ‘could’ choose to not worry about whether they have the most perfectly decorated tree, or the most Christmas lights on the block, or the perfect gift, and just look around and breathe in what is already around them.  More people could.  Yes, indeedy.  

*smooch*