So, yesterday I sat out on my deck knitting and it was pretty idyllic (excpet that I was alternately shivering and sweltering with the annual family back-to-school cold…and there was this really belligerent hummingbird…).  The sky was blue, the temperature was mild, and I had nothing to do (that could not be put off til later) other than sit and knit (and shiver and occasionally cower from the hummingbird).  I was knitting my German short rows like a champ (having mastered the little buggers over one grim and maddening evening a couple of weeks ago, but never mind that!) and was calculating how long it would take me to finish that baby sweater.  Which led me to calculating how long it would take me to finish the other baby sweater I have in my knitting bag.  And on to calculating how much knitting time that would leave me to finish the pieces I am hoping to wear to Vogue Knitting Live in Seattle the first weekend of November….

And I began to have a sneaking suspicion that I will not be able to complete what I am hoping to complete in the time in which I have to complete it all.  And I started to kinda panic a little (it was about this time that the hummingbird made its first attack — okay, actually more of a foray to scope out the blossom situation on the deck, but it was pretty aggressive nonetheless).  Now, these "calculations" are actually more like intuitive guess-timates since it is nearly impossible to pinpoint exactly how many minutes and hours a knittted garment will require.  But I am experienced enough to get a sense of it all and I realized that I had been harboring a knitting production delusion of the sort I generally reserve for the Christmas Knitting.

Because the Vogue Knitting Live pieces are not cowls and fingerless mitts — they are full on shawls!  Billions and billions of stitches!.  And even some lacework and some design work — and even, fluttering hopefully in the background a jacket out of yarn I had not even wound into skeins yet! (And speaking of fluttering, that hummingbird was buzzing around furiously due to the spent nature of the potted plant and the highly diminished amount of blossoms — for which it seemed, as it circled in menacingly, to blame me!). 

For a while, as I churned out German short rows and chugged iced coffee to soothe my burning throat, I contemplated chucking it all (not the baby sweaters, of course, but the VKL pieces) and throwing all my energy and time into a new project with thicker yarn on larger needles — such as the tuck-knitting sweater I have been itching to design since I got Tracy Purtscher's Dimensional Tuck Knitting book last week.  Because, of course, a sweater that I had yet to design in a technique I had not yet tried and knit with yarn that I did even have would be a more realistic project than shawls that were already at least underway!

Fortunately, I was dragged out enough with the cold and harassed enough by the hummingbird so that even the thought of designing a sweater made me tremble and feel a bit nauseous (tho that may have been from chugging iced coffee — which can really sneak up on you!).  And as I huddled in my wicker chair shielding my face from the tenacious buzzing feathered fury with the rapier beak that was steadily closing in (and a baby sweater is not much of a shield, I can tell you!), I tasted despair.  

But despair once tasted is best spat out!  So, I flicked and flailed at the hummingbird who, though he looked like a swordfish when hovering 18 inches from my face, was actually no bigger than my thumb, and who promptly zipped away to other battles.  And I German short-rowed my way through the rest of the baby sweater back, thinking:

"I will knit what I knit and I will not fuss a fit!"

And that evening, I settled into my cozy chair in the living room with a cup of herbal tea and knit little autumnal leaves to garland my wooden squirrel 🙂