Countdown

We’re almost down to it. I’ve got one week, less a handful of hours, to keep my 2010 resolutions.

You folks at home are thinking that I’m in dire need of new calendar, right? I’m a week past the start Chinese New Year, a full two months past the standard Gregorian calendar, and the groundhog already said spring is on the way. Fair points.

But I make my resolutions from Stitches to Stitches, and I’m into the countdown now. (Stitches, for the uninitiated, is a knitting conference and fiber festival. I’ll let those of you who don’t knit sit there and blink for few minutes. I assure you your reaction is not atypical.)

My Stitches resolutions are usually very simple. I’m going to knit all the stuff I bought at Stitches last year before I walk in through the yarn-decked doors of the Hyatt again. And at T-7 days, I can frankly say it’s not going to happen.

I won’t have you thinking I bought so much yarn last year that its pushing the roof off my house and oozing out the eaves. I bought a modest selection for very specific projects. I have an ambitious sweater-like project that is currently on the needles (one set of them anyway) from last years spoils, and a skein of Socks that Rock that’s awaiting transformation into footwear. That’s it. Oh, okay, I probably bought a couple of balls of Greenland, but Greenland is to me what Malabrigo is to other people, and by “a couple” I literally mean two, so that doesn’t count. (Like my logic there?)

It’s not that I don’t want to knit these projects. It’s just that, well, there was the glove thing, and then people keep having babies all over the place and someone’s got to knit for these kids. Plus Cookie A. wrote a book, so that can’t be helped.

So, I sat myself down and renegotiated terms. We (that would be my inner yarn nymph and I) determined that the spoils of last years Stitches don’t have to be fully knit by S-day 2011, just in progress. The Obviously-Not-Impossible Unsweater is already on the needles and has a full sleeve to its name. Check. And as soon as I finish these Cookie socks, the Socks that Rock will be next in line. I can do that in a week... if I’m very dedicated... and make Ania drive us to Santa Clara. And presuming no one else pops out a pair of twins between now and this time next week. (Seriously, folks, lay off with the bunny impersonations; you’re freaking me out.)

The thing is, resolutions are commitments we make ourselves about the things we’d like to accomplish, or learn, or create. The world will not cease to spin on its axis if I don’t finish this pair of socks by next Thursday. And it’s not like I can’t buy a ball of yarn unless my stash is dead empty, because when would that ever happen? My goals for myself are things to reach for, and if you always know you can reach your goals, if you don’t ever come close but just miss it, then you’re not stretching yourself. You’re not setting goals either. You’re just planning out things to do for the day, like breathing and blinking. Like when I announced to the twitterverse on December 31st that I would watch every episode of Firefly again this year. Well, duh.

So one week from today, I’ll be at the happy hour gathering with the Ravelry folks in the ballroom at the Santa Clara Convention Center, likely with a pair of socks of some description hanging off a pair of needles in my hands. They may or may not rock by definition and title. If you’re there too, come on over and say hi.

And, incidentally rumors of me attending said event in my pointe shoes, green veggies socks, and mouse ears have been greatly exaggerated; I don’t think there’s enough cosmos in the world.