My head hurts

O.K.

Let me explain. 

One of the few words of wisdom I am able to offer my students is one of my own personal discoveries.

That is when you are learning new things your head actually hurts. It's those new neuro pathways being built (I actually have no idea what I am talking about but this sounds great), new muscle memory being laid down, and all that activity hurts more than say slumping on the couch watching Mad Men and wondering what kind of foundation garments Joan must be wearing.

I use this line, and wait to use it, when my students complain that something I am saying, or trying to teach, makes their head hurt. "Good" I say "Great. That means you are learning."

Well all those years of being a total smart ass and annoying year after year of undergraduates has returned to haunt me.

It's karma man.

Karma and it's called golf and fair isle knitting.

The thing is, despite decades of my family insisting I have zero athletic ability (that was assigned to someone else and in my family once these things are doled out they are taken) I actually really like golf and am a not as bad at it as you might think.

However I am having a skill distribution problem. When I get my drives working, my irons go to hell. When I get my irons working better, my drives act like they need Viagra. Can't get them up.

Back and forth, one or the other. Never both.

This does not make me happy. And having my husband says things like "those are different shots you know" brings out my need to be a nice wife and not a person who, well you remember Tiger Wood's wife.

After about 40 games in the last two months there are a few mountains I would have hoped to climb over by now. But then again there is next season.

Not sure I can say anything quite so optimist about my fair isle vest project. I am taking this course on Craftsy and having put it off as long as I could by knitting this sweater:

This picture is pre-blocking, it looks better now, much smoother, but I had to strike while the model was hot.

However I have got to the end of the video lessons and no where to turn but to actual knitting. The instructor is very knowledgable, but fairly dippy (and coming from me that says something), there is more telling that she likes to knit samples than technical details like how not to lose you mind with 47 dangling ends going on and what to do with jogs. I suspect it has been so long since she found this hard she forgets to tell you how to overcome that part.

I figured this fair isle was a skill I should learn. I spent 4 nights winding skeins into balls and knitting samples trying to get gauge and getting used to the pattern. I have knit and unravelled and this is what the vest looks like at the present time:

All I have learned so far is I hate the bright yellow and am going to be making a substitution.

Fortunately my gauge is still wrong so I am emergency ordering in some more needles in a smaller size from Amazon and that gives me some breathing room to settle down before I go once more into the fray.

I am finding all of this really hard. My head hurts. 

But then I remembered what it was like to learn to sew. 

How many things did I screw up before it got easy? 

A long long time, like until last week.

And at the end of the day I guess I would rather be someone who was still in the process of painful brain expansion than letting it roll out of sight like those bowling balls that go down the alley. (This is my head analogy I just realized).

I will keep telling myself that, primarily because I have spent a fair amount of money on this whole project without actually having knit one decent inch.

And in closing I figured a shot of my golf coach is in order. Here he is in one of my sewn creations, doing one of the things he does best:

I think we call this a par.