It Appears I’ll Never Get Finished

One of the things that has always bugged me about knitting is that I’m never done. I’m the type of person who thrives on accomplishment. I get my kicks from achievement.

So I would start a project with all the glee and gusto in the world, knit as fast as possible, get bored halfway through, muster up my strength and continue knitting, and FINALLY finish. And what a glorious feeling that would be! I would revel in that delicious state for about, OH… two minutes.

Until the bug to start another project hit me and I would be off to start the cycle again. So I stayed in a constant state of frustration that I only experienced that feeling of accomplishment for a few moments. Maybe it’s just my nature. Maybe you deal with this as well.

Recently I was reading Esther and Jerry Hicks’s book, Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires.
(Which is hands-down one of the most profound, life-changing books I’ve ever read and I HIGHLY recommend you read it). In it they mention that in life, we will never be done. Ever. If we were, we would be dead. That in fact, the point of life IS to desire, create, experience, and then desire something new, create it and experience it, in an endless circle.

To be truly happy is to revel in that state of being “in the process.” This is new for me. It seems so obvious as I write it, but it truly was profound when I first read it.

I’ve always considered accomplishment to be the point of life, not “being in the process of accomplishing.”

I am still working on it, as I’m in love with the feeling of being finished, but I have come to learn to relax as I’m knitting and enjoy each phase of the process.

What is your favorite knitting or crocheting phase?

•The thrill you get when the inkling for a new project strikes you and you rush to rummage through your stash to see if you have the yarn and needles you need?

•The delicious excitement of actually finding the perfect color and size yarn, casting on and seeing the first few rows take shape?

•Or perhaps you enjoy the many endless rows of stockinette stitch or chart reading or repeating a memorized pattern in your head as you knit, knit, knit away for days, weeks, maybe even months.

•Then there is the building up of excitement again as you realize (gasp!) you could actually finish today! So you plow through and woopee! You finish. You bind off, you cut your yarn and you place your needles down beside you with a sigh of satisfaction and pride.

•Finally comes the finishing. You soak your piece, you pin it out to dry in shape, and once dry, give it lovingly to someone you care about or keep it for yourself.

If you’re like me and always feel driven to produce more and more…it’s okay to stop and take a breather in your knitting or crafting and realize that you will never be done. When you have a passion like knitting or crocheting, you love it so much that you will surely be working stitches as you draw your last breath. And that’s okay.

Enjoy your knitting today and be at peace. Thank you for your time in reading this post. It means a great deal to me.

(P.S. When I started this blog, I used the Livefyre plugin for comments. It was supposed to make it easier for you to post your comments on your twitter or facebook accounts. I do think it’s a great system, but for the purposes of my blog right now, I took it off, as I felt it just added another step to the commenting system (the login was a little fussy), thus possibly preventing some of you from commenting.

I have (for now anyway) reverted to the original commenting system which you can see below. If you don’t mind, take a minute to leave a comment so I can see that all is working well! If you encounter any hiccups, let me know via email.)

P.P.S. Or is it P.S.S? I am working on several stealth projects for Christmas, which I can’t blog about yet. Thus the lack of blogging recently. But I will have scads of pictures for you after the holidays.

I am slowly making progress on my Pretty Thing Cowl, made with my handspun qiviut, which you can see in the top picture.

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