Perseverance and the Cabled Bolero

Someone who shall go unnamed, unless she wants to identify herself, said a very nice thing about my blog: that it's more stitchin' and less bitchin'. So, no more whining about this lovely sweater. Instead, a few reasons why you should try it:

• it knits up fast, fast, fast; even I, who takes a year to weave four napkins, could have finished it in a few weeks if I'd focused
• there's something glorious about the way that the cabling spirals in a continuous line from pentagon to pentagon
• it's good to reroute occasionally from the expected journey of knitting back, then front(s), then sleeves, then seaming, then finishing; with this pattern, you move sideways, then up and down, then squeeze a sleeve in between four pentagons, and at no time does the fabric that you've knitted resemble anything like the finished product
• this is knitting yoga: the frustrations and missteps are the very times when your most ingrained, irritating personality habits come to the fore (full disclosure: for me, lack of patience, too much affection for product and not enough for process, perfectionism, especially with regard to fit) - and then you can marvel at the silliness of your reaction, and hopefully spend a bit less time in those doldrums on the next time around

And my favorite: If it doesn't fit, give it away.

Postscript: here's a link or two to two very different takes on Norah Gaughan's Cabled Bolero. Tomorrow, when there's light banking off the snow drifts about my house, I'll post a picture of my progress.