time after time

In the early years before my first marriage, my fiance and I would stop by the home of his elderly unmarried aunts and uncle every new year's eve before we went on to party with our friends. Uncle Joe would have decorated the house with Christmas lights inside and out and Aunts Elsie and Rose would have been baking for days. We were feted with wine, food, opera music on the hi-fi. Later the aunts would each take brooms and sweep every room, moving toward the open front  door where the meager dust (they kept a clean house) was swept over the threshold. This Sicilian custom was their way of getting rid of the old and starting anew. I didn't add this tradition to my subsequent busy life of marriage and children. If I'd swept the floors of every room in my various houses toward the front door, I'd have had to order a dumpster to take the debris away - I never could live up to the meticulousness of the unmarried, childless aunts, but something of that tradition appeared in altered and ever-changing form through the years.

During these days between holidays, I find myself finishing up knitting projects. Two pairs of socks done! and two more with goal date of January 1st. Then I'll continue working on the luscious red/raspberry yarn I bought yesterday at the yarn shop in town and couldn't stay away from last night before getting to the heel and temporarily abandoning the two half pairs I'd planned to work on... My daughter, soaking in the tub last night recovering from the huge snowfall they had in the northeast, called. When I described this new yarn she broadly hinted that she could use a new pair of socks because I wear your beautiful socks every day. Clever, no?

The other glitch in my virtuous plans for completion? I started a Minimalist Cardigan (Interweave Knits, Fall 2007) using my Rowan Felted Tweed stash in a slatey gray/blue color.

I began with the right front because even though the gauge seemed correct I wasn't sure if I would really like this sweater in this yarn (it's a bit fuzzy). But it's turning out pleasingly light and soft and will make a really nice early spring sweater if the moss stitches don't kill me first and I can take it to completion without it becoming another GIP (guilt inducing project) that I'll be faced with next year at this time. I won't even talk about the cabled cardi that's almost done that I take out of the closet annually and vow to finish - and then put away again. It's very nice but I wish someone else (an elf perhaps) could finish it while I'm doing other things.

Meanwhile, speaking of guilt, I will have to cut back on all knitting projects in early January to fulfill writing and editing commitments/deadlines that procrastinating me has moved to a dim cellblock in my mind. Perhaps a Sicilian broom could sweep it into the open.