LIFE IS LIKE A BALL OF NORO!

With all due respect to Forest Gump...Chocolate aint got nothin' on Noro!

Life? Life is never constant....And neither is Noro.

The colours of our lives flow into one another and sometimes you see a beautiful sunrise and sometimes you're met with the view of the town dump. Sometimes you get to knit with the gorgeous blue or teal or pale green and sometimes you get that murky washed out brown and that "yucky green".

You may plan your life and you may plan your knitting, but the Universe, (and the Knitting Gods --- they're all in cahoots you know) is what controls both these ventures. It really is best just to surrender yourself to be open to how the skein unwinds.

You can make choices. Minute choices, such as, what to wear, and God help us, what to have for dinner, AGAIN!! (N.B. I LOVE Pancake Tuesday. At least one dinner has been decided for me there and at least the children and I are happy. My husband, however, is confused...EVERY YEAR, HE'S CONFUSED...as to why we are having breakfast for dinner?) The major decisions, such as where to live, where to work (inside or outside of the home), to what medical treatment is best suited to you and your family. The choices are endless! So too, we choose a type and colour of Noro yarn, we select a pattern (not necessarily in that order), needles and we cast on, hopefully we've made the right (?) choices. Only time will tell.

The one constant that you CAN count on in Life and in knitting with Noro is that there will be glitches to the plan, there will be decisions to be made, there will be tears and there will be joy, but at least in Knitting there is always the option of the "Do Over".


Here is my Haliburton Noro before yesterdays knitting time. I had set aside two balls for each sleeve, but that wasn't quite enough, and so I went searching among my left over bits. I am a tad obsessive when knitting Noro; wanting to stay true to the colour shifts...I may have mentioned that before...and not one of the left over bits sang to me. When I began this project I thought I was going to be in charge of how it all came together; after all, I was the one knitting it.

The ball that I had started the I-chord with,(See? Ball band labeled with an "I" because I "planned" for the skeins that would work for each part of making this sweater. Hahahaha!) that has been in limbo since the inception of this sweater held the answer! So I pulled out the centre of the ball to a point that I could continue on for the completion of sleeve number 1.

As I will likely encounter the same problem with sleeve number 2 (again, note that ball bands have been labeled "S" for sleeve and "S1" for the skein with which to begin the sleeve!) I sift through my left over bits and "plan" for the inevitable.

I left renewing my Health Card until the last possible moment, but I made sure that I knew which ball of yarn to use for the next sleeve...yup, I've got my priorities all set!

Left over bits organized with enough (I hope) to actually complete the sweater!

So here's the thing. I pack everybody away. I make the cut to the I-cord skein. I settle in to knit and congratulate myself and tell myself how wonderful I am to make the effort to ensure this aimless shift in colour from ball to ball. I'm knitting the only slightly "yucky green" into the orange, and I'm pulling out the yarn to continue knitting, and I'm looking at the colour shifts that have occured earlier in the sleeve, and I think, "Oh, look at what colour is next!", and I look at the skein as I'm completing the orange and beginning the transition into dark teal green and I see...

---Please take the time now to go back to the first picture that I posted to see if you can find the clue as to what happened next in our story---

Another clump of Orange.

And I sit and knit, yet am a bit bewildered. How did they do that?

I continue to knit.

"I bet you there's a knot!", I say, to no one in particular, and keep knitting.

Yup, a knot. Another stinking, making me cut the yarn, AGAIN, or work with a knot in the middle of my work, which is NOT acceptable, and have an absolutely funked out wrong colour progression, KNOT!! Had I looked more closely at the skein I maybe would have picked this up, but Geez! You know, it's like a relationship that you've been working on over and over. When is it time to accept that it's just not working? To admit defeat and move on to another courtship that doesn't involve sooooo much effort!

Not today, my friend!

I cut the yarn, I finished the sleeve, I packed it away and I took this beautiful picture of the fronts and back of my wonderful Haliburton Noro sweater!

It really is better just to go with the flow. I think I'll go buy a Box of Chocolates!