February 8, 2008

Great Start, Lousy Finish

I don't what psychologists call people like me, but I'm sure there's a scientific name for it.

I'm one of those people who loves to start new projects. For me, trying something new is like falling in love. It's intoxicating. Actually finishing the project once I've mastered the skill is like realizing your new love leaves the cap off the toothpaste and forgets to change his underwear. It's decidedly unglamorous.

On the plus side, I'm a heck of a starter. Take knitting, for example. I first learned to knit when I was in second grade, and I would do it at recess while all the other 7-year-olds were playing kickball and climbing the monkey bars. Even then, I was a geek who hated to sweat. Knitting was soon replaced by reading, which has never lost its appeal.

I had a brief reunion with yarn craft when I was a young mother raising boys and lambs. I knitted them wooly mittens to keep away the frostbite during the frigid Indiana winters and oiled wool hats to keep their heads dry even in a snowstorm.

Then I got busy with other things, like making a living. One night a couple of years ago, I was watching TV with Keeper and doing a crossword puzzle. I suddenly realized that I habitually did something else while watching TV. When I didn't have a second thing to do in front of the boob tube, I tended to fall asleep or wander off from boredom. Knitting seemed the perfect pastime to keep my hands busy and my guilt at bay while watching American Idol.

Of course, I went whole hog. I bought instruction books and pattern books and mounds of yummy yarns. I bought needles and stitch markers and a fancy bag to hold them all. [Shopping is the best part of learning a new craft.]

For my first project, I shunned the traditional scarf and hat projects suggested for beginners. After all, I was experienced! I decided to do a patterned vest. After a couple of false starts, I found I had nearly six inches of the left front finished the first day. I still had to re-learn increasing and decreasing, so the rest of the piece held my interest. When I had finished, I noticed the instructions for the right side were, "Same as left side, only reversed." There was that word: SAME. Telling a thrill seeker to repeat the same old action is a deal breaker.

Not wanting my first knitting project in 20 years to be a failure, I pushed through the boredom and completed the vest. At least, I finished the knitting part. The pieces are still in a bag, waiting to be sewn together.

There may be a hereditary component to my problem, because my sister is afflicted as well. When their children were young, she and her friend both had a serious fabric addiction, aided and abetted by proximity to a fabric store and houses with plenty of storage. They swore each other to secrecy about the actual amount of fabric they had hoarded. In fact, they promised that if one of them died suddenly, the other would tell the bereaved husband that the boxes and boxes of fabric in the garage didn't belong to his late wife - she had been storing them for her friend.

I'm no longer in denial. I hereby acknowledge publicly that I have numerous unfinished sewing, art, yarn, and decorating projects.

You know the TV show that sends in a crew to finish remodeling projects that homeowners started and then abandoned? Why won't they send someone to my house to finish the knitting, beading, sewing and framing projects that I started? They could call it Crafting 9-1-1.