Progress equals happy

I guess that one strategy - at least, one strategy I use - for dealing with the slings and arrows of every day life is to work on things I control.

I openly admit it: I am somewhat of a control freak. I think one of my ongoing frustrations in dealing with people is that not only do they not tend to behave in ways I would expect, they often behave in ways I consider unreasonable given the situation. And that's why the Dicta From On High make me so crazy - we're all doing our jobs, here, we're all doing a pretty darn good job if you look at our records of both job placement and professional/graduate school placement, and also, anecdotal evidence I have from seeing former students at meetings and such, the quality of the preparedness they get is good - and yet, somehow, that's NEVER ENOUGH. And it sure feels like I'm doing ENOUGH already, with three classes (each with a lab), and the Directed Readings class, and my research, and my committeework, and the outside "civic engagement" stuff I do (Less than I once did, but still)

And the NEVER ENOUGH is another one of my issues. It's probably tied up with the control freak-ness; one of the things that makes me most upset is to be criticize for not being "good enough" at something I don't have full control over. (I'm still not totally over the idea that my last teen Youth Group member left because "the youth group wasn't good enough" even though I realize that was probably code for "there weren't enough other kids")

But anyway. What I do have control over these days is a shrinking subset involving knitting and quilting. Both of which I did this weekend.

I finished the first of the Little Ice Age socks (after over a year of mostly-not-working on them). This was after making a special run out to the knitting/quilting store because all my cable needles had disappeared, and using a shorter double-pointed needle for cabling on a sock with lots of tight cables doesn't work so well. Pictures will come later. I started the second sock but am not very far yet. I expect the second sock will not take as long as I've now figured out how the pattern "works" and will not need to constantly consult the key for the chart to remind myself if it's a front cross or a back cross.....

I also sewed more on the Mixtape quilt. I have the first three rows all set together - the author of the pattern gave a suggested layout, so you get a Sudoku-like arrangement where no combination repeats in a row or column. So I decided just to follow that, rather than trying a layout. (Giving up a little control? Though it's more a "I just don't feel like crawling around on the floor for 2 hours" thing)

And I hand quilted on the quilt in the frame. I'm finding that with this one - with the simpler quilting design - I can finish the area the frame covers in about a half-hour. So one episode of a cartoon, and I can move the quilt, which is gratifying. This one is probably just slightly less than half done, and I'm already thinking about which quilt I want to put in the frame next. (I need to do more hand quilting; it is probably the most calming of all the crafts I do. I know they claimed knitting was the new yoga but I find that hand quilting is much more meditative. Partly because you really can't pay a lot of visual attention to anything else - you can listen to music or listen to the television, but you can't really watch closely if you want to get much quilting done, because you need to look at what you are doing.