on again, off again

I had three self-imposed projects that I started hmmm over the last few months that I have dropped nearly completely. I am not reading Shakespeare in the way I had thought I would. I do still carry around my copy of Romeo and Juliet, though, just in case and last night after the kids went to sleep I started reading it again just enough to get me to go to sleep. Ahem. I have not started any more home projects and have certainly not finished up home project #4- couch! I know this because we still have no couch. Whenever I think about this I hear the song "Yes, we have no bananas," in my head which should say something about the lack of bitterness involved. And, I have not been knitting one new project and then finishing up one old project each month for about 2 months now. I mean, I suppose I could hurry up this month and fit something in {maybe} and let go of only February. It turns out there is a reason so many of my old projects are sitting around. They make for dull company and I have half a mind to rip them all out. In fact, I am still stuck on the most {possibly} boring knitting project ever- putting in a pocket- into the sweater that I have taken so many pains to modify before the weather got too warm to wear it. Again, ahem. I had such high hopes for putting a zipper on that sweater as well and darn it if I didn't buy the wrong sized zipper that last time I went to Joanne's in search of a zipper. How on Earth I bought one that was 5 inches too small I don't understand. Now I have it straight. All this of course means that I have to motivate myself to drive over to Joanne's again and get another zipper and until I do that, there the sweater shall sit. Nothing quite like almost-finished-knitting-sitting or even this-knitting-was-once-finished-and-is-now-sitting-again. Still, I have very little bitterness, more like complete non-interest. I mean, don't get me wrong, it will be a shame {sort of} if I don't wear this sweater again until next fall. Then again, I think my neglect has more to do with some of the details not working out in quite the way I had envisioned them. The whole point of modifying this sweater was to make it better than it was. It is better, I will give it that. But will I actually wear it {still}? That is the question. Have the modifications done enough so that I will put it on and wear it out there- even if only to the dog park? Or for a walk in the woods? Who can say until it is done. And what then, if I won't wear it? More modifications? To what end?

This, I must say, is the good and the bad of knitting. On the one hand, knitting does give you, as I have written before, an opportunity to fine tune the endless possibilities inherent in an unused skein of yarn. On the other hand, what about finally finishing something already? Surely, while the process is amazing, there is also something to be said for a product as well {at least eventually}? I don't know. I am torn. Obviously.

These questions, I can find them anywhere and everywhere I look. To what end? I think, as with everything else, it must be both. It must be the joy in the process and the thrill of the product. Without both we are left with a lot of lifeless stuff taking up space {too much focus on product} or naked and hungry in the snow {too much focus on process}. It's good to have both.

And what does that mean for my sweater-in-the-fixing? I've really no idea. At least not now. I can fix it up, put in the zipper and the little embroidered flowers I have planned, wear it to the park, marvel that I made it, bemoan the smaller pockets each time I put my hands inside- modify those? Or I can put it back on the shelf until next year, forestalling the product a little while longer in favor of a longer process. Wherever the sweater takes me. Or something like that.