I Hate Do Overs

When you're a kid on the playground and a ball slips out of your hand or you're balance is a little shaky and you stumble you can always do it over again. Do over is a favourite call for most kids.

Then there's the other kind of do over. You know the kind I mean. It's the do over where you've just finished knitting a sock and you have to do it all over again to make the mate, because as we all know feet come in pairs. So if you're tatting a baby bootie, cheer up, just as the first one is done, there's a whole new bootie to start.

Ears come in pairs too. So every earring you make means there's another one coming up. The same thing happens with mitts and gloves. I hate things that come in pairs because no matter how much I psych myself up, I know that a finished one isn't the end, it's only the middle.

I like working on a project and when it's done. IT'S DONE! Having to revisit a pattern makes me cringe. I made the butterfly that I use as my logo and stupidly gave it away. I have the pattern and more thread, but I just don't want to have to do it over.

I have a novelty bookmark that I did which was a free tatted tree with flowers at the base and a butterfly for a tassel made with several colours of size 12 perle cotton. Because it was freely tatted with random rings as leaves and a solid tree trunk made with several rows of chains, it would be difficult to reproduce it exactly. I'm rather fond of it because the trunk makes a nice straight side to fit into a book and the idea of a piece of tatting that's also a picture, just tickles my fancy.

The other day hubby was vaccuming and he decided to dust of my night table. I am not a neat person. My night table is covered with the usual flotsam and jetsam typical of a night table and bits of ephemera that even I have forgotten was there. I don't much care if the bits of thread and the odd bead gets sucked into the bowels of the machine. But since we had just had a discussion of "Did I have any white hair ribbons hanging off the dresser?", as something white had just gone down the tube, I was a little concerned when a similar exclamation was uttered as he ran the machine over the night table. The only thing I know for sure was on the night table, because I use it all the time and love it dearly, was a certain one of a kind bookmark.

When the unknown object had flown off the dresser and down the throat of the machine I didn't even bother to look, but when the same thing happened to the night table I had to check. The bookmark I had created with size 10 thread as a project for my beginners class sat proudly on the table, but the other original, took me weeks to make it bookmark, was no where to be found.

It's OK, I could make another...I hate do overs. If it's in the machine it's going to be in the middle of a very full bag of dust dirt and hair... It just went in, it has red flowers on it, it should be easy to see. Right? Maybe I could fish it out with a crochet hook.

Not only could I not fish it out with a hook, I couldn't see anything but grey dust inside. Even after I cut the bag apart I couldn't see anything but one big hair ball full of dust. I poked, I prodded, I turned it upside down. Then I got both hands in ripping things apart and came up with....a white shoe lace. I know what got sucked off the dresser. I tore some more. Then finally, I found this little grey lump. It kind of felt a little bit like it might be tatting, so I coaxed it out of this big ball of snarled hair. I still wasn't sure what I had, but after a bath with lots of hot water and detergent, I have my one of a kind bookmark back.

I'm so glad. I hate do overs.