Patience

I'm always knitting, whenever I have the opportunity: during film screenings, at home, on the bus (though I haven't been on a bus for a while).  I love making visible progress on my knitting projects.  Even if I only have a few minutes to spare, each exists, each stitch counts.  Most of teaching and research have intangible, unmeasurable results.  Knitting, on the other hand, is concrete.  

Yet patience is also an important part of knitting.  There are times when all those stitches (all those hours) have to be unravelled and redone.  In that sense, I had a discouraging weekend.  The sweater I have been working on for some time had to be pulled apart completely when I saw that I will not have enough yarn even to finish the sleeves, let alone the hood and button band.  So it had to be undone ("frogged").  The picture at the top left is before and this one is after.  Someday I will make something else out of this yarn.

In my impatience, I stomped around the house for a few hours, grumbling to myself and being generally disagreeable.  And then I came across Mieko, waiting patiently with his Balli, hoping that someone would notice him and feel like playing.  He's really much more patient than I am.