Monday 5 May 2008

Sewn up

I've been putting off sewing up the knitting in my Basket partly because I am the queen bee of procrastination, and partly because I was scared of sewing knitting. I've read that it's difficult, and trying. I'd heard that sewing up reverse stocking stitch is hard, and joining stitches to stitches fiddlier still. I read in the first Stitch'n'Bitch, which Anna lent me when I was learning to knit, that some people dislike it so much they take it to knitting shops to pay other people to do it for them. The only thing I've ever sewn up - my third, disastrous, finished knit - was lumpy and loose and lopsided.

Oddly, I often don't feel like knitting much when I've exams looming. Stranger still, this year they seem to make me want to sew. So I finished all my mending (some of it having been in the basket - a different basket - for nigh on two years), organised the old jam jars and cottage cheese pots kept as storage containers which are usually in a muddlesome heap on top of one of the kitchen cupboards, and polished all my shoes. I painted my toenails when they needed it rather than when I could be bothered, stuck recipes in my scrap book, and ironed everything I could possibly justify pressing (and I loathe and detest ironing). And when there was nothing else I could possibly do between blocks of revision, I sewed up.

After all that, I quite enjoyed it. Let's hope this lasts past exam season.


Pictures when they've reached their recipients.

2 comments:

Ashley said...

You know, i beame Stitch N Bitch for making me afraid of finishing when I did my first few sweaters. If it had been like, "hey, this is the fun part! All that work of knitting, and now there's just the easy-peasy sewing up and you're done!" I think I would have had a much different attitude than I did after reading "people hate this."

MeowGirl said...

sounds like your exam-stress coping mechanism is giving you a tidy, spring-cleaned home. you're getting so much done even between revisions.

perhaps sewing up knitting will always be a comforting activity for you from now. nice memories of how it got you through exams. :)