On Incorrigibility

I'm great at beginnings. I have at least a dozen screenplays started on my computer, half-finished knitting projects tucked into dedicated bins, and sketched-out paintings stacked behind my filing cabinet and under my bed. This tendency, to start something full of promise and fail to follow through, reveals itself in more harmful ways too: at 30 I've never settled into a career, skipping instead from city to city, from job to unfulfilling job. I want to be a painter, a cheesemaker, a small-business owner - and I can't follow through on any of it.

Sometimes, this gets me down - I feel like I've failed at being an adult human, or that this flightiness is the outward manifestation of some deep, fundamental flaw. On the other hand, I like being a dreamer - I almost always feel like there's something big and special out there waiting for me, and I just haven't found it yet. But maybe just around that corner --

I've started yet another pair of socks. The yarn just leapt out at me, a purple glow in a wonderful shop in historic Frederick, MD. I was in town for my aunt's wedding, but the yarn reminded me of my other aunt, who has had a tough year health-wise and is preparing for major surgery. Her favorite color is purple.
I tried to make vanilla socks -- I tried. I started a perfectly nice ribbed pattern and realized, not even through the first cuff, that I was going to be bored. So I frogged it and went back to a pattern I've been poking at for a few months, a little scared. It requires reading a chart and the toe is anatomical, which I've never seen before. And I was just getting the hang of the kitchener stitch!

The pattern is called Kalajoki. It's a plain stockinette sock with a meandering, wavy ribbed river that rolls all the way from the cuff to the toe. The chart isn't complex - as usual, the hardest thing is keeping track of which line I'm on! The flowing line appealed to me for my aunt - undulating and unbroken, maybe it will convey some relaxing quality to her as she convalesces.

When I reach the end of this sock, I'll start on its mate - or maybe I'll see something shiny, find another skein of yarn, decide I'm done knitting and take up throwing pots. Until then - the wave continues.