I think I’ve figured out something profound. I really hate doing the same exact thing twice. Now you may be asking yourself, how could I possibly knit if I don’t like repetitive things? But it’s a different level of repetitiveness. I don’t mind knitting two stitches, but it’s like pulling teeth to knit two socks. Or two sleeves. Or, for an example which may or may not be sitting in my knitting bag right this very moment making me feel guilty, sewing the second sleeve and side seam on a baby sweater which is otherwise finished.
I figured this out as I was (finally) working on Carrie’s snoopy pajamas this afternoon. (Possibly instead of sewing that last seam on the baby sweater. If such a sweater actually exists, that is.) Since they’re footie pajamas, the first thing I had to do was pin and sew the toes to the bottoms of the legs. The first one was fun, the second one I did just to get to the next step. The shoulder seams were fine, because they’re little. Then came the sleeves. Again, the first one was fun, the second one…I dilly-dallied for a bit, clearing off the ironing board, checking ahead in the instructions, fondling the footie fabric I bought with the neat little bumps on it…and then I realized that I would never get to use the fabulous footie fabric unless I sewed the evil second sleeve. It didn’t help that every seam had to be double-stitched either. I seriously considered putting the project aside, but then I might have had to go downstairs and sew a second sleeve into a hypothetical baby sweater instead. I decided that was marginally worse. I pleaded and bargained with the pattern, begging it to let me do any other step first, but it wouldn’t budge, so I had to finally just sew the blasted sleeve in.
It’s odd that I can manage to live with a toddler while having such an aversion to this kind of repetitiveness, since we read the same books over and over, sing the same songs over and over, and have the same conversations over and over. I guess maybe this second fill-in-the-blank syndrome only extends to crafty things.