Our Lady of the Unfinished Objects

Below are pictures of most of my UFOs that I have recently worked on. I have way too much stuff going on right now, what else is new in my life, huh? You'll also see a photo of Henry telling me to make felted clogs too--I have evidence that my child is enabling my addiction! (Blaming others--not a good sign.) Luckily I have resisted so far, and I think I actually WILL finish the fuzzy feet before starting those.

Along this vein, I am signing up for a finishing class at Webs that starts next week. My plan is to go to the class with a completely knitted but unsewn Haiku so that I can practice and get help. I don't think the class will help me be less of a nutcase about starting projects and knitting monogamously (duh--don't start another one, don't need a class for that one), but I've never been strong on finishing, and have never liked it, and have never really learned it all the right way (I taught myself to knit from a book). So I think this course will be good.

The finishing course is part of a new Master Knitter Certification Program Webs is offering (not to be confused with TKGA's Master Knitter Certification). I think it's good--I'm not overly impressed with the TKGA program--not that it's bad, but I am not dying for strangers to critique a bunch of swatches, when I think that construction, design, creativity, and understanding of the craft as a whole are much more important to ones development as a knitter, or at least to mine. The first three courses at Webs are about color knitting, an overview of different cultural knitting traditions, and finishing. Much more up my alley. However, I don't know about you, but the description of the program at Webs left much to be desired. No information about what's in the curriculum beyond the first three courses, not even how many classes you must take. I emailed the instructor, and hopefully I'll find out more. I *might* do it. We'll see. I don't really need to take something new on, but this sounds like a lot of fun.

Thinking about this does sort of point up the big conflict in my life right now. I am considering going back to graduate school for an Ed.D. I found out I don't need to go back and get another master's (I have an MBA), and it's absolutely obvious to me that it's the logical next step in my career. The grant I'm currently working on is like a ready-made dissertation, with tons of primary research data and someone else has already paid for it all! But you know, I'm almost completely unmotivated to do it, and the idea of taking the damn GRE (again! I took it in my senior year of college, then I took the GMAT to get into B-school, and to take it AGAIN?) makes me almost physically ill. I have tons more energy to investigate the curriculum of the ever-lovin' KNITTING program than I do to do the same for the Ed.D. program. And I can't decide if this is a sign that I'm just not ready for this and I need to slow down, or if it's a sign that I'm spinning my wheels (which I have been doing for a while, professionally; going through IF and then having twins will do that to a gal) and need to just DO something to move myself forward.

It makes me wonder if I shouldn't just move away from higher ed research and try to do something professionally in the world of knitting and fiber. Not anything arty or crafty--my income requirements are too high for that, I couldn't support my yarn habit on knitting alone--but for example doing marketing research for yarn companies or starting a yarn business (I have a kind of cool idea for a line of yarn, I think). Still don't know what the right thing to do. I've been "sitting with it" for a while, and I'm not getting any flashes of insight. So what do you, dear reader, some of whom are total strangers, think I should do with my life?