Incredible, Really

No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again. Sometimes I just want it to stay saved! You know, for a little bit? I feel like the maid; I just cleaned up this mess! Can we keep it clean for... for ten minutes!
-Mr. Incredible, The Incredibles

It's incredible, really, how much knitting one can do when one is actually knitting. I speak, of course, of The Chuppah. The Chuppah is my post-boards relaxing knitting. You know, 'the vegging out in front of the TV because all you've done for two days is answer multiple choice questions' knitting. And it is actually getting relaxing, now that I'm doing a lot of it at once. I'm learning the pattern, finding a rhythm, . . . and calculating the time. The good news? I'm now about 16% done, which is more than I thought. The bad news? Well, it isn't bad, per se. Let's just say that I have a spreadsheet. A plan. I'm calculating the work by square feet of knitting (which should tell you something right there), and the goal is to do one repeat (44 rows, approx 6 vertical inches of 6 feet in width, i.e. three square feet) per week, which will have the middle panel done in two months (mid-March). The middle panel - incredible as it may seem being that it's 6x6 feet, is only 56% of the total knitting. Then I have a foot-wide border around the whole. Giving myself another 2 months (until mid-May) to do that, I should have it ready to give to the bride in June. And I'll have approximately 4-6 weeks of a cushion in the event that all does not go according to plan.

Speaking of plans, I should tell you how it is that I'm making incredible progress on all the projects I'm actually working on. It's the UFO Resurrection Challenge. It's so liberating - freeing, really - to only work on one UFO a month. Instead of feeling as if I should be working on all of them, I finished my one, and now I only have 4 active projects - The Chuppah, Rowena (details to follow), the Railway Stitch Socks, and the Humbug Pillow (because one always needs a computer-sitting email-reading project). And they are all coming along nicely, while the others patiently wait until their months.

Sometimes, though, those projects are not sufficient. I did pull out the long-neglected Uniform Socks last night to go watch The Good Shepherd. It was a nice long movie - I knit the entire 3x1 ribbing section you see below, maybe 5-6 inches. Because I wouldn't want any potential knitting time to go to waste . . .

And speaking of quotations (weren't we?), an annonymous commenter had asked where I get the quotations that head my blog posts. (And please recall that "quote" is a verb.) Two places:

1. My commonplace book. It's very Victorian, I realize, but I've been jotting down quotations I like since some time in high school, now spilling into their third book. Often if I'm at home, I grab one, flip through it, and find something that I think will suit my theme.
2. More often, however, Google is my friend. I google "quotation" and "whatever-word-seems-related-to-my-theme." And sometimes I come up with something fun, like today.