I had this lovely post all written out and then it kinda just poofed.  Basically it blithered on about how I am in a knitting funk due to less than stellar comments about something I knit for the baby.  In almost 40 yrs of knitting I have never before dealt with the ungrateful knit gift recipient issues one hears about so I just ripped it.  I am even considering just throwing out the yarn to get rid of negative connotations which sounds overly dramatic.

Surprisingly, despite the drama bit, it was a learning lesson.  I mean in the past I have been depressed or stressed and not knit because I couldn’t summon up the enthusiasm/energy for doing so.  My fathers long illness followed by my marriage totally falling apart for example.  This is the first time that a knitting snafu threw me into an emotional tailspin.  Which I think is odd given that I have been knitting most of my life.  I turn 47 in a couple of months and I have been knitting, off and on, since I was about 8.  It is one thing that gives me a sense of self.  I am a knitter.  It is also I think I am good at.  Along with cooking, it is an activity which I feel I am able to show my love and appreciation for others as well as express my creativity and get recognition for doing something well.  So not only am I a knitter but my sense of self esteem is also built into knitting.

I once read a book called Women and Self-Esteem that has an exercise in the beginning chapters to illustrate that women, men too I suppose {I don’t remember}, often value the qualities that they do not possess.  So because they undervalue what they are good at and value that which they are not good at they suffer from poor self esteem.  The exercise was to shift the qualities you do have into the valuable range.  There are few things that I consider myself successful at and, not to be immodest, knitting is one of them.  I mean it is such a forgiving craft  not that I am Ze Best Knitter in Ze World.  That may be why I was totally thrown when The Flame criticized my knitting.  He is usually a very enthusiastic and admiring knitting enthusiast.  At first I thought it was him being old fashioned since his criticism was about my color choice.  In his opinion babies wear pastels colors but the garment I was knitting, a BSJ in Lagoon, is obviously not a pastel.  The link is clearly not my jacket since I ripped mine but it is a picture of the same project in the same yarn so a good approximation.  Well I really like his daughter and hope she likes me so I kinda paused.  He knows her better than I do but I finally, after speaking to her about her non existent color preferences and asking if she had something for pastels over say black and grey or brown or strong colors or anything else, finished up my knitting.  THEN she tells me her husband hates green and she doesn’t care for it either.

In other knitting news I was working on a Super Secret Morocco Mole project when I realized I didn’t have enough yarn.  I was avoiding pooling so alternating hanks of yarn, something I don’t normally fiddle with but I wanted to make something extra specially nice for the flame, so didn’t realize I wouldn’t have enough yarn until I was almost finished with the second half.  Curses to Claudia’s hand painted yarns which has significantly less yardage than I am used to working with.  I am also considering pitching that yarn.  Is that too drama llama?  I really just want to put all the ickiness behind me and I am scared if it hangs around, ripped or not, there will be associations.

OH!  Well the whole interesting to me bit about the emotional tailspin is how it affected everything else.  I have been uber funkalicious all month long.  Really I feel like I am battling depression and losing big time.  I am trying to do all I should be doing on a daily basis, and we all have stuff we must do, and struggling to ‘Just Do It!’ but the encouraging bit, my mantra if you will is:

I think it is really important to make an effort, every day, to do stuff, even if we don’t feel like it, because we have expectations to meet.  Sometimes those expectations come from within but other times they come from family and friends.  As a parent and partner the stuff I do is like a huge I care.  Even if I don’t want to care or feel like I am caring it is a way to show my love and work on maintaining a good bond.  I am not the only person that feels this way.  Tho sometimes I just want to snuggle up in bed and care for myself which is when a fresh start matters.  Yes ripping is good.  Totally not staying mired in last month and gonna turn a new page.