Happiness is starting a new project.

(And I had forgotten how much I loved that song. "Happiness is two kinds of ice cream...knowing a secret...climbing a tree.")

I started in on the fitted, u-neck vest from Stefanie Japel's Fitted Knits book. I'm using a hazel-colored Cascade 220 heather.

Why do we (or at least, why do I) love starting new stuff so much? I tend to start so many new things that it takes me longer than it should to finish up the stuff I have going on (this is, sadly, true of research projects as well. I have three that are in the process of having papers written or re-written on the results, two that are in the data-collection stage, and one that I need to begin sometime. I really need to take on less stuff). But there's always a promise to the new. This time, the sweater will be perfect - it will neither be too tight nor too baggy. I will for once look at photos of myself wearing it and not see the fact that my waist is thicker than I'd like, or that I'm not tall and willowy like sweater-wearers are "supposed" to be, or that my hair is always a mess, or that my skin's so pale that you can see the unattractive blue veins underneath. This sweater is the one that will be technically perfect, that I'll finish up and have no extra balls of yarn left over, the one where I'll learn some great new technique.

I tend to be fickle in my projects - for some things, if I leave them lying around for long enough, it's almost like having a new project to start on when I pick it back up.

But I love starting new things. It's kind of like an infatuation, before you learn all the cold hard facts about the person - it's that sweet stage before his tendency to slurp coffee, tea, and soup gets on your nerves. Or before you begin to see his attentiveness as neediness and clinginess. When you're more willing to forgive things, to not let things get on your nerves, just because of the newness and the wonderfulness and how it makes you feel.

(Of course, if you're lucky - you pass through the infatuation phase, you see the little faults for what they are, little, you shrug and go "I can live with those" and then you build a life together...and if you're really lucky, you get back to the point where the things you once thought were faults are actually things you love about the person and wouldn't change about them.)

And, who knows? Maybe starting a new project - at least for some people - fires off the same neurons that fire when a person's actually beginning to feel infatuation (I mean, like with a real person). Heck, if they say chocolate can do it...

But it gives me hope, too, starting a new project. Hope that it will eventually be fall again, fall and winter, when it will be cozy and nice to be indoors, and it won't be so humid, and the ragweed will have stopped flowering, and I can wear the sweaters I've made and be happy in them. And also, of course, the same crazy hope that this will be the PERFECT sweater, the one that will hide what I consider to be my figure flaws, and highlight the things I like about my shape...or that it will go well with everything else in my closet. Or that it will be so perfectly cozy that putting it on in the morning will be like being a kid again, and being at home, and having a mom to make a big bowl of Cream of Wheat for me for breakfast (I never have Cream of Wheat for breakfast any more; there's never time to fix it. And I don't like the instant stuff) before packing me a lunch and walking down to the bus stop with me.

Yeah, I ask a lot of my sweaters. That's probably why my postmortems of them (which is how I think of my critiques when I photograph myself in them) tend to be fairly harsh. Because even though I realize there is no sweater that magically will make it become fall, no sweater that will make me feel loved and cared for if I'm feeling a little lonely and bereft - I still would kind of like to believe that there is.

I've talked before about how I kinda-sorta believe in a little bit of "sympathetic magic" as far as certain pieces of clothing are concerned. I have a scarf that has, as one of the yarns in it, Artful Yarns' "Cinema" in the color they call George Bailey (a deepish, true blue). I tend to feel like nothing too bad can happen to me whenever I wear that scarf. And I have a jacket that I made from a Palmer and Pletsch pattern (sewn, not knitted) that I secretly think of as my "goddess jacket" because it's got purple in it, and because I feel powerful when I wear it.

I have to admit, I'm kind of hoping the same for the Kenobi jacket. (Which, yes, I am still working on, despite my fling with the u-necked vest). Oh, I know, it's only a name (and I might have been less attracted to the jacket had it been called "Stitch-Sampler Jacket" or somesuch). But I do hope maybe wearing it will give me the confidence - and thus, the Jedi mind-powers - to deflect those who would have me do tasks I do not want to do. ("This is not the professor you are looking for. You can go about your business.")

And so, I keep knitting - hoping for perfection, or joy, or at least something really, really cool to wear.