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.

reading shakespeare

Last month I had the idea to read Shakespeare this year. Like most people, I have read some of his plays at different times, some by choice, some for school. I have seen a few more acted out at Shakespeare festivals or during summer time productions. It has been several years since I have read or seen anything by Shakespeare and there are still so many of his plays and sonnets, etc. that I have not read. Why not read them now when nothing else seems to be appealing to the reader in me? It's true, I haven't been reading very much lately. Nothing really steady for the last few months. It is one of those periods of time when I start several books and nothing seems to take. The books remain half read by the side of my bed or are promptly returned to the library. All good books of course, their timing in my life is just not what it could be. And to be honest, there are some books whose time never comes. I put the Shakespeare idea on hold for a few weeks, maybe a month and wasn't sure if I was going to pick it back up. It's good to have ideas that you can follow through with and others that you can let go. There is no shortage of ideas and I don't like to censor that part of me lest I find myself completely without inspiration some day. I prefer to let the ideas flow and flow where they may.

Last night I watched Shakespeare in Love and decided to pick up my Shakespeare idea again. At the very least I am going to read Romeo and Juliet. It seems like one I must have read in 12th grade English but I can't remember anymore. That year was really so overtaken with Thomas Hardy (who, by the way, I have also revisited in the last several years and who I really really enjoyed, contrary to my first experience with him which I remember as being excessively dry. Jude the Obscure is fabulous. My seventeen year old self would probably cringe to hear me say that, I realize, and Mr. Cauldwell would be thrilled. It was his favorite. That reminds me. I have been meaning to read Far From the Madding Crowd, one of Hardy's that I also have never read. I love how inspiration leads to inspiration!) that I remember very little else.

So Romeo and Juliet and then on to Twelfth Night because that was at the very end of the movie and I know I have not read it. I am thinking of rereading my favorite Midsummer Night's Dream. I also still have a copy from many years ago of The Merchant of Venice, where, as legend has it, Shakespeare created my name, Jessica. I bought it so many years ago in a small independent book store in Virginia when I was visiting my aunt for a week during the summer.

OK- the memories are flowing along with the inspiration. I am feeling up to it, excited, and wondering if I could even handle one of the drier histories that I have dutifully avoided all these years. One of the Henry's, perhaps. Or a Richard. Who knows where this could lead me- reading Shakespeare in the garden in the spring sunshine, flowers blooming around me? How's that for inserting a little poetry into your life? All's well that ends well, and all that, you know...