Ack, I'm going blind!

I am in the midst of a Hobby Hop.

I have a tendency to dedicate myself to a craft almost exclusively for a period of time ranging from a couple of months to a couple of years, and then switch with almost no warning. The "no warning" bit is actually rather annoying, because I have a bad habit of buying the materials for the next 5 projects or so, and then they don't happen. They usually don't happen on the next round, either, because they no longer interest me.

Well, it appears that knitting is swiftly being relegated to a social and movie-watching activity while crazy-quilting and cross stitch duke it out for new art-of-choice. Cross stitching appears to be winning. This is actually kind of unfortunate, because I have a plethora of crazy quilting materials and a use for the finished objects, whereas cross stitching just sorts of sits there being a picture.

Then again, I have wall space. Pictures are nice.

So anyway, I pull out this little cross stitch kit intended to be made into a greeting card (like I'm going to send that many hours of work to someone as a throw-away card. Pfph.) that I'd started during the last cross stitch round years ago and not gotten far on, and OMG! The stitches are so small! Were they always this small? Gosh, I'm getting old!

Actually, perceptually they weren't always that small. When I first started the project, I was wearing glasses with a weaker prescription. I love my contact lenses, but the convenience and improved distance vision comes at the price of near objects appearing smaller. Not blurry, just smaller. When I could only wear them for 10-to-12 hours a day I just gave up trying to estimate sizes of anything ever, because size perception between my glasses and contacts was just too different. Now that I can wear contacts all the time, I'm getting better at guesstimating sizes again, but yes, the this project does appear smaller, and it has little to do with me getting old.

So, that feeling that you're old when you're actually not? When you've got more than half your expected lifespan left, it's just that for the first time in your life, music you listened to when it was released is now on the oldies stations and childhood toys are now collector's items and clothing styles you've worn before are back in fashion? When does that feeling stop? When does it actually get into the deep part of your brain that this is normal adulthood and not "old", and the 'everything is new' was actually part of being really terribly young?

Because academically I know I'm not old; I've hardly started. But the deep down part doesn't always listen. I'd like it to get on the bandwagon and stop the whining, please.

Barring that, you kids get off my lawn. ^_~