While I was Distracted

I'm one of those weird knitters that gets itchy if I have too many projects on the needles. Now, I know that as some of you read this you are rolling your eyes and shaking your head while mumbling things about my sanity and how could I ever be a real knitter. I am, never the less a knitter, but I'm a very easily distracted knitter. And this, many would think means I'm a pretty run of the mill knitter. That's why so many of us tend to have multiple projects on the needles at any one time. As I heard someone once say, you know you are truly a knitter when you have to go put a project on a stitch holder so you can steal that size needle for your latest project. I on the other hand know that I'm easily distracted, recognize the very truth to such realities and try to work against it. In the above mentioned case, I would instead put the pattern of my latest project craze to the side to be cast on next when I realized the needles were in use and finished the previous project before casting on. Mind you, I would probably still take the time to pour over my yarn stash in a search for the perfect yarn match and if need be transfer money out of my savings to go shop for the perfect yarn choice in question. But I would not cast on, nor would I buy another set of needles while yarn shopping.

As much as I may have beaten this logic into my knitting, it still hasn't spilled into the rest of my life yet. And today, I realized that perhaps I need to work on this. Why you ask? What sort of epiphany happened today? I went to the bathroom. Yep, I went to the bathroom.

Now before you go to the wrong places with this thought, let me explain. I had gone outside to see Bob cutting daffodils for his fathers nurses in the ICU (more on this later) with one of my good kitchen knives instead of my garden snips. You know, the garden snips that are designed for this kind of task? So much for good clean cuts on those flower stems. In disgust I went to find him said snips and realized I had to go to the bathroom. So, in I went and saw the five gallon Home Depot bucket full of water that was for the half full aquarium I started cleaning earlier sitting in the tub. Just to make sure, I went out and confirmed that the aquarium was indeed half full, awaiting new water as the filter pump struggled against the water level. As I went to pour it in, I realized that I wasn't sure if I actually treated the bucket with dechlorinator. So, I possible re-treated the water (we'll never know shall we?), Bob came in with the vase of flowers eliminating my need to find the snips before I returned downstairs to work on cleaning and organizing the man cave to find my vacuum brush head disassembled on the floor... Oh yeah, I forgot that bit of yarn that tangled that all up.

What caused all this you may ask? Bob took the kids to the park for a romp and as I was cleaning the aquarium. When I went to get a drink of water for myself I passed my knitting bag. That's right, yarn fumes once again caused the destruction of all my well laid plans. I pulled the couple of inches of the Ginko shawl out and decided that I was indeed not happy with the stitches and tore it all out, which led me downstairs to the search the stash for the more perfect yarn, I got to cleaning the big room that has become the dump all room/man cave, where I proceeded to notice the brush head wasn't working. While digging through the pile of dump all in the corner in attempt to locate what my toolbox where a screwdriver may be I found my flask which I thought depending on how the family meeting went this evening, would be a good thing to clean out and refill with some good whiskey (that by the way did get done and placed into the knitting bag), which then in a round about way led me to finding Bob in the garden with my good kitchen knife.

So here I stand typing this little adventure out as a warning to new knitters, and yes, I did get the vacuum put back together the aquarium filled (as Bob interrupts to ask me if the light should be turned on), the garden snips located and my tool box dug out of the heap all in the man cave. I am even proud to say the man cave is cleaned and organized and there will be pictures to come. It may not have happened in a logical order, but it did get done. And back to that note, NEW KNITTERS: Don't listen to the siren song of the yarn fumes! It is not time to finish a project when you have all needles not only in use but with a project queue for their future utilization, but rather when the knitted item is needed! Baby sweaters should be given to the baby upon their arrival into this world, not on the day of their graduation from a Masters Degree program. Beware the yarn fumes! Despite their whispered reassurances they are not your friends!