Tuesday, August 2, 2011

It's not me, it's you. I'm sorry.

I don't finish knitting projects so much as I.....break up with them.
I seriously hate almost everything by the time I finish it! It's not that I don't love the knitting, I do. And after we spend some time apart, I generally love the thing I have knit. It's just spending so much time on the same thing...och, it wears on me.

I drool over patterns and yarn porn until I find the perfect combination, then cast on with so much hope and excitement. I knit happily along and then it happens. Somewhere after the halfway mark, something changes. My eye wanders. I long for the touch of another yarn. I start surreptitiously checking out other knitting, sometimes even crochet! Mmm, look at the cables on that one! I could knit that like a screen door in a hurricane...well, that's a bit of a mixed simile there. I might reach into my stash to cop a feel of the pima cotton/silk blend I have there in a lush dusty purple under the guise of rearranging things. Sometimes I stray far and begin something new, something thrilling and fraught with new possibilities. It rarely works out.

I get sick of the sight of whatever large project is getting on my nerves. I see it sitting on the chair and think, "Oh, you again." and sigh with the tragedy of it all. The last few inches of every sweater or lace shawl I have completed are riddled with foul language. Screw this pattern. The designer can go right to hell. This wool is for shit. This sheep was an asshole, in fact this sheep can go to hell with the designer. No, fuck this sheep. No, make that ALL SHEEP. EVERYWHERE. AND THE ALPACAS, TOO!

And then I am done. And I weave in the ends. And I block it and we spend some time apart and then when I come back to it I think "oh my word, how did I make such a thing?" and start all over again. Because I love it.

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