(Note:  in
knit-speak WIP stands for Work In Progress)

You can pronounce it with a long “i” or a short “i”  — I am feeling both wiped and whipped by my
works in progress tonight! 

It is the fact that knitting only progresses one stitch
at a time.  And the fact that I am
knitting with rather fine yarns on rather fine needles.  It makes for slow going.  Even the baby booties are not so much inching
along as millimeter-ing along.  Sigh.

Whatever else goes into knitting – money for yarn,
creativity, skill – the plain old time spent on any project should give it some
solid value.  I am knitting my life into a baby blanket, minute by
minute.  When I think of what a finished
piece costs, I think of the time spent more
than I consider the money spent.

Actually, I don’t think of money as spent on yarn at all – it is gambled
on yarn!  At a yarn shop, I might gamble
$150 on yarn and hope to “win” a gorgeous wool cabled sweater.  If I am being totally straight with myself,
that is how I look at it because life is uncertain and there are no
guarantees.  And I can be a bit
fickle.  Maybe I will lose all desire to
knit cables.  Or I will get side-tracked
with a capelet or lace shawl.  Or maybe I
will come to the conclusion that I would really never wear a wool cabled
sweater. 

There are “heat of the moment” yarn purchases in most
knitters’ lives.  You wake up the next
day beside a pile of angora and wonder :  what was I thinking?  But there are good bets, too.  At the moment, I am betting about $35 of
poppy-colored wool on a lovie blanket for my new grandbaby!