Sometimes, a part of a project will make me take a step back. Sometimes it’s the part of the process I don’t like, such as cutting fabric. Sometimes, it’s a mistake I’ve made that means I’ve not only got to figure out what the mistake was–I’ve got to undo a bunch of work in order to fix it. Sometimes, it’s none of those things and yet, I feel daunted by the next steps.

Last week, my boho blush had me feeling daunted. For some reason, I had no desire to start the lace section. Now, the lace section is super short, with only 3 remotely lacey rows, and still. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Finally, armed with coffee, I broke down and got started. On the second repeat, I realized I’d made a mistake. This brought in another of those step-away-from-it feelings, and I just stuffed the thing in its bag.

As I knit on other things, I felt a bit guilty that the boho blush was getting no love. I tend to knit mostly monogamously on larger projects, and I really like seeing them grow. And then I saw an Instagram-story by Jennie–tinypaperfoxes–talking about knitting to milestones. She was saying that she has more projects than usual on her needles and wanted to work on all of them while still feeling like she was making progress. That struck a cord with me. I decided to think about my projects in milestones.

I told myself that once I reached a certain point in one of my secret makes, I’d get the boho blush out and just work on it just until I finished the next two sections. That little bit of a mental game with myself certainly seemed to work. After putting some serious work into a secret, I got out the shawl and fixed/finished the lace and last night got through that next section, too. I’m happy to report that the shawl and I are back to the honeymoon stage. I’m head over heels.

I’ve been wanting to get out the serger, but that had two things working against it. First, it’s brand new and I’ve never used one before. Second, I had to cut out fabric for the top I was going to sew up with it. Well, I finally cut out the fabric. I’m 99.9% sure I cut it in the wrong direction, but it still stretches so we’re not thinking about that right now. With my fabric ready to go, I fired up the serger, and did some test serging. The practice seemed to be going pretty well.

It goes far faster than I ever expected, and I am really un-used to the foot pressure needed for slower stitching. So, I got out pattern pieces and started sewing. Everything seemed to be going pretty well. I serged the shoulders together, and started putting in the neckband. Disaster.

Would you look at that? Now I get to learn how to unpick serger stitches and redo the neckband. I may use the sewing machine for it, just because controlling the stretch of the neckband, while not stretching the neckline, while trying to serge slower without stopping… maybe a bit much. My goal is to finish it off this weekend so I can wear it on an upcoming trip.

In other news, I’m still working on socks. I’m trying to get more done on other things, so these are coming along slowly, but they’re always good for a nice comfort knit if you need it. Sometimes when all the other makes feel difficult, a little sock gusset can bring you around nicely.

YoM day 313: Shawl knitting, socks, and secrets

Happy making!