whipsawed by confusion

Socks are old news.  Old!  I don't care if Kowalksi has been hassling me for a pair of handknit socks since I can remember first missing the ice skating, I have to quit!  Because he has a birthday coming in March and I have to knit a coat from the long-ignored Katia pattern book #11 for Fillette.  I am determined to give my little girl something handmade for her Christmas present!  Christmas!  That stupid holiday we only observe because of her!  One day I hope it will go the way of Halloween.

Actually, the twist this year is that Fillette has acknowledged that Santa Claus is Not Real.  She made up Santa, fed by culture, and we observed a strict don't-ask/don't-tell policy.  The first time she strongarmed us into Christmas, when she was 3, she would talk about Santa, and I would start out by firmly explaning to her that Christmas was about a baby named Jesus, not about Santa.  Then I would frankly explain there was really no Santa, that "Santa" was a name for a feeling people got about holiday giving.  I say all kinds of age-inappropriate, lofty shit to little kids.  Whatever.

On Christmas Eve that year, I filled stockings with some things for each of them in the middle of the night.  When she came running downstairs at 5 am, the next day, all elated & singsongy in her sweet cartoon voice, Mama! Mama!  Look what Santa bringed me!  A chocolates anna dolly anna Hello, Kitty papers! I could not actually bring myself to deny Santa, and she had had good, wide-eyed behavior at Mass the night before, so I said nothing.  This is Fillette's special gift, the sneak attack of cuteness and sincerity, onto which I project a vulnerability I have always refused.  It has pretty much resulted in her twisting me extra-hard around her tiniest finger, even as I try to protect myself, even as when in stable, sane moments I know no good will come of it -- she will leave and I will be ruined.  Recently, in my sane moments, I have considered that maybe I will not be ruined, but perhaps be left better for having known her, but anyhow.  Gah!  Lalalala!!   

The point is that holiday knitting is upon me.  I have not yet had a year since I started knitting where I have had to sit down and make a knitting schedule.  Not just a list, but a schedule!  I have a list that I made this fall.

2007:  tea cozy, socks, capelet, baby blanket, little coat.

I was young then. 

In review, the tea cozy got lost when I needed a new ball of the Debbie Bliss Baby Cashmerino in black, that I thought I had, but obviously did not.  No LYS is so subversive as to carry black baby yarn, so I had to mail order it from the excellent Yarnmarket.  By the time it came, I was heavily into turning the heel on the sock (the heel which had to be ripped back).  Right about then I started going to the gym a lot. 

Things were still looking pretty good for the sock to get picked up when the thread arrived, but until I can sit down in one place and knit the heel flap, which requires counting and paying attention, I cannot get back to it.  I tried to get back into the sock at the 6-year-old birthday tea party I went to last week at which I was inadvertently dressed like a gun moll, but the counting!  And I would have ordinarily been quiet & knitty, but gun moll!  I had to speak up & participate in normal chatter!  Ours is a small neighborhood!  The worst thing about the sock?  I speak of one sock, but need to produce two.  Blech.

The capelet lost ground when I had it out & about, turning turning turning and I realized that I was supposed to be decreasing every few rows, but I could not remember how many stitches or how many rows.  The baby blanket --which I vowed to make from stash -- caused me to experience such distraction in the yarn choices and the pattern that I was finally forced to consider that the baby does not rate high enough to receive a handknitted gift.  (Honestly, the baby who got the last blanket was an extra-plus-especially compelling baby on top of her father's connection to me.)

So, that is all good news!  No baby blanket!  The capelet can already go out, since it is only for me (sad song of knitters everywhere, wah wah wah).  That leaves me with little coat, socks, and tea cozy.  The satisfying ending to this dismal craft schedule update is that it is raining cats & dogs for the third day in a row (sorry, SoCal) and I can sit down and get to that heel flap!  Or the tea cozy!  Or casting on the little coat! 

Obviously, I cannot focus.  I need some kind of scheduler.  Or a pill.  I could put the knitting schedule in my brand-new Blackberry -- 8:30-10pm nightly, knit ceaselessy -- except that I have no time and my newest worry is that my Blackberry will be flashing 12:00 for a decade, until the grandchildren have pity and fix it for me.  Also, I think I accidentally just said yes to a trip to the bowling alley.