UFOs and other life lessons -

UFOs- UnFinished Objects

I can’t lie….I am kind of ready to say goodbye to 2015. It has been a difficult year for a lot of my friends and has also brought on some life trajectory realignments for me. I am grateful to be in our new home and have both my kids attending college, but there is a messy part of the year that has just hung on.

Okay, enough whining, the purpose of this post was to share my unfinished objects. I’ve started far too many knitting projects and I can’t seem to finish a single one. I mention this now because I think my knitting style is directly related to how I live life.

Could this be A.D.D?

New projects are started with excitement and all the hope for wonderful results and somewhere between the dropped stitches and lost pattern, I decide that I should start something else. Maybe something less challenging, something that will travel well. Halfway through that boring project, I am sure I should start something more challenging and stretch my skills base.

This accounts for most of my UFOs, but there are even more elusive types of objects. The never-to-be-seen items. These are the half-finished objects that get unraveled because they will never be good enough.

I never follow a pattern

Now let’s take a deeper look at me.. eh, I mean at my knitting.

Before I begin, I need yarn. Lots of yarn! The dye lots must match, so I’d better buy an extra skein just in case. Now that I have made this investment, I rethink the original design because I need to justify the cost of the project. This means that the original design should definitely be modified. I spend far too much time with pen and paper making calculations and changes. It gets late and the project sits. I’m afraid to ruin all this good yarn.

Fear of failing keeps me from finishing

For those of you still with me, you may see there is a lesson here that is completely unrelated to knitting. I feel I have to get out of my head. I have to stop planning and preparing. I have to start doing! I need to focus and finish. I’m stressed just thinking about it!

There was a time when I’d say knitting was like meditation, but now it seems to be calling me to action. I have prepared the yarn and modified the plan. I know exactly what I want my “project” to look like. I have the skills to do it. I just need to act without fear that it might unravel.

My Greatest UFO is not a knitting project. It is a dream that was spun from the deepest part of my imagination. I have spent hours designing it in my mind and now I just have to Start. I have to cast one stitch at a time. I have to mind the task and see it to fruition and know that It’ll be alright.

I am not ready to share My greatest UFO just yet, but I will share what’s on my needles at the moment for those of you who were interested in knitting after all.