"Just one more row..."

“Of course I'll use this new yarn for something! ...eventually.”

“I'll just cast on and knit up a few rows, just to see how it looks. Then I'll frog it or put it away."

“Just one more row...”

The last one may, when spoken or thought by a knitter, quite possibly be the most dangerous combination of words to punctuality and a good night's sleep in the English language. Books got nuthin' on the Zen-like serenity of yarn work when you're on a roll. Particularly for a knitter like myself who is already predisposed to generally losing track of everything until she comes up for air-- wait-- has it actually been hours?? We are, as a group, notorious for not admitting when to put the needles down-- even to ourselves. I'm pretty sure that so far this week I have woken up, disoriented, to slumped needles, dropped stitches, and having to hit pause quickly on my audiobook before I overhear a plot spoiler, pretty much every night.

"Spoilers, sweetie."

Or, just as annoying, having to skip back... back... no, further back... good lord, was I really asleep that long?

Not that long.

One out of every five nights or so-- just enough to keep me me ever hopeful-- instead of nodding off in my chair, I get my second wind and knock out half the project in one mad stitching spree. If not for these randomly sporadic bursts of productivity, I might never finish anything.

And then there's my poor, long-suffering family, who have finally gotten wise to me and when I say, "Just one more row..." they hear, "Don't expect me for at least half an hour." And if I'm trying to fix a mistake-- well, there's no telling how long I'll be immersed in TECHknitting, various knitting tools sprouting from between fingers like surgical implements. My last mistake took at least three nights of ripping down and laddering back up between four and six stitches before I was satisfied. Then I discovered I'd missed a kfb about ten rows down. I tried to drop the stitch down to it, but I ended up losing so many kfbs I quickly got confused and ended up having to rip out the entire ten rows. TEN ROWS. And after all of that, I didn't get more than six or seven rows up when I missed yet another increase. This time I did my proper research and fixed it from above on the next row (thank you, TECHknitting!), but still.....

But I digress.

It's not like it's just knitters who do this. How many readers have succumbed to "Just one more paragraph/page/chapter..."? How many afficianadoes of television serials claim, "Just one more episode..."? One more piece, one more box, one more bowl, one more glass... Just one more.

So please try not to judge your procrastiknitter too harshly; there are worse things to be just one more-ing. Look on the bright side: at least ours is productive.