Adjusting to Reality...

Christy wrote an interesting post on Knitters At Work the other day. We'd been discussing everyone's propensity on the blogs to list their knitting accomplishments for the year just past, and the fact that so many people do so MUCH knitting (and a lot of it really high-quality stuff, too), it's a bit mind-boggling and somewhat intimidating, too. Christy's post about accepting who we are and our present life stages brought up the point that often we have to accept the fact that a lot of life is out of our immediate control.

We've certainly seen a lot of evidence of this over the past few years: hurricanes like Katrina and tsunamis, coal mine tragedies, wars that seem to drag on interminably, terrorism and such. In our personal lives, things have a way of jumping in and waylaying us just when we thought we had everything figured out. But Christy reminded that sometimes there's a serendipity to that, too, as in snow days. Just think of the fun you had as a kid when "life" got in the way of what you had planned and dumped several inches of the white stuff, closing schools and making it possible to spend the day just sliding down a hillside over and over again...

Well, Christy really got me to thinking about the fact that even tho' there are a lot of things in life I want to control - to the extent of "white knuckling" every last possible event of the day with short, shallow, tense breath - there have been a bunch of them recently that just refused my intervention (and don't think I didn't try very, very hard to make them do what I wanted!).

In December, I committed to reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles in the Knit the Classics KAL. I also committed to knitting something red for Tess, which I managed to do (see photo below). The book, however, remains unread.

There's a reason for this. I don't see well enough any longer to read for extended periods. While I can still see well enough to manuever through my life and while I dearly love to read, reading for pleasure is no longer an option. The fact is, I need my reading eyes for work, and that's essentially where reading will stay.

Lots of folks have suggested books-on-tape. And today, finally, I said, okay I give in. If Christy hadn't been the friend she has been, if I hadn't read and ruminated upon her post to the Knitters At Work group, I might not have come to this even now...I've fought it so hard for almost 2 years. And for what? Vanity? I don't know the answer to that one.

So I've reserved Tess and January's book for Knit the Classics, Mrs. Dalloway, both of them on tape, at my library.

And you know what? In the spirit of "making lemons out of lemonade" and that serendipity that Christy was talking about? Well, it just dawned on me that I can listen to the books on tape and knit at the same time! That's called multi-tasking, isn't it?

Oh, and for Mrs. Dalloway? I think I'm going to be knitting a rose pin, the free pattern for which I discovered on Sarah's Yarn Box. It looks quite fast and relatively easy (quite imperative this busy first month of the year)...and uses stash yarn, to boot! What could be better?
(((hugs)))