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My friend and I recently had a conversation about procrastination, and the gigantic role it plays in both of our lives. Unfortunately. Of course I’ve read books specifically about this nasty little habit (another great way to procrastinate doing something is to read self-help books about what you should be doing). One of these books (called, aptly, “Procrastination”) explained something that I’m sure I’ve always known in some way for a long time: one reason some people procrastinate is because they are perfectionists. This absolutely applies to me.

Now, contrary to what some of you might think, a perfectionist is *not* necessarily someone who does everything perfectly, or is “anal” about how everything in their lives are arranged. Actually someone who is a perfectionist (like me), is afraid to start many things. She is reluctant to reach out for the things she sincerely wants for herself. Because she might be unsuccessful. And so she puts it off. After all, if you never start a project, it’s impossible to fail.

Since I put things off, and avoid reaching for the things I really want to achieve, I haven’t had a lot of experience pushing myself past novice-hood into a greater understanding and skill level in any particular area. School and work don’t count, because those are things I *have* to do for one reason or another. I’m talking about pushing myself when no one else cares if I continue or not.

This is where knitting comes in. See, the key part of this story is, knitting was never important to me. It wasn’t any kind of life goal of mine to be a successful knitter, and I certainly didn’t identify my abilities as a knitter with any kind of self-worth. Therefore, I was able to keep trying. I didn’t give up, I didn’t procrastinate. It just didn’t matter to me one way or another. If I didn’t feel like knitting one day, it wasn’t because I was avoiding it.

Of course, none of this was anything I thought about consciously. It’s only in retrospect that I realize what was happening. And it is in retrospect that I realize how much I’ve learned through this process. (Like, life-lessons-learned, not three-needle-bind-off-learned. I still don’t know how to do an I-cord. That’s not the point.) The point is, there are life-skills I’ve gained that can actually translate to more things than just knitting. Cool, huh?!

The reason I think it’s relevant to talk about these little bits of understanding here is that, even though they are “life-skills” (or whatever), they are still important skills to have for the task of knitting. And practicing them make knitting even more enjoyable. I’m talking about things like patience, persistence… and others that I won’t get into yet. These are things I’ve been thinking about for a while, especially since I started this blog and put “knitting” at the forefront of my mind for an hour or two when I do a post. Maybe this doesn’t even make sense to anyone else, but hopefully it will as I talk about more specific aspects of it in future posts…

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On to the fun part:

The sleeve is cuter than I even thought it would be. I’m a big fan of 3/4 length sleeves, although these are even a tad shorter than that. Only one more sleeve to go! I bet you thought this would be done by now. I mean, Sharon is *finished* with one side of Season of DWL already, and started the second side!!! (It looks FABULOUS, by the way.) And it has taken me many days/weeks to do one little sleeve. Hee hee. I told you I haven’t been knitting much…

You may not be able to tell from the picture, but I actually didn’t finish this top. I decided I really didn’t like it after putting the other ruffles on. It was good practice, though, and now I know how to do the ruffle thing. I’m going to start on a shirt, which may be similar in some ways, but I’m going to change things about it. I have tons of the black jersey material to play/practice with, yay!

And once I get something going that I like, I’ll plan out some hand-embroidery to add to it. I got lots of thread - all different colors. Again, yay!