The pay off

The "Monster Grafting", as I was taken to calling it, is done. I've seen several people say it isn't so bad and it isn't really. I'm just horribly impatient when an item is close to finishing. I want to try it on. I want to see if it'll be all that I hoped. Self-awareness of this problem has helped me to stop ending pieces too short and hating long bind-offs (well as much anyway). The trick, for me, on something like this lengthy kitchenering I learned back when working at a thrift store in school.

When I first started, there was a seasoned employee there, a bit of a character (as most were I came to find) who liked to pass on tips to me. The store use to have these Half Price Saturdays every other month. Now people would always laugh when I'd say this. "Haha! Half price at a Goodwill?! Like, what, 25 cents off?" No, you have no idea. It was insane. People scouted days before, stashing and hiding items of want. Fights, arguments, and craziness ensued. Now the shoppers, contrary to popular belief, were not the downtrodden but the well off middle-upper class suburbanites. Yet they went NUTS. Working the register was exhausting; the lines extended at least 30-40 deep all 10 hours of this hell. I remember walking up to the register my first day and this coworker saying, "Don't look at the end. Just focus on the person in front of you, that’s it. Do not look at the end." This tidbit was continually passed on to new employees at their first Hell Day when faced with The Line and had that deer in the headlights look about them.

The point of this self-indulgent anecdote? I always find myself thinking of that when embarking on a task such as the Lace Leaf grafting. Just doing each step is rather enjoyable, once forbidding myself from looking at the progress and bemoaning it would take foreeever.

Not as much personal non-natural optimism with the second sleeve however. A few little rows from the final stitch I decided to compare sleeves. Ahhh, the sinking feeling of knowing it's wrong. The gauge was vastly looser, the previous arm being completed many months ago. It was stand back at 3 feet and still obviously looser. Arg, I am being force fed this lesson of patience. Ripped and reknit and hey, this really is a quick knit. I'm almost back to the sleeve cap. I was able to try on the body at least and was happy to find the length is perfect.