Make sure you love it

Making and finishing a thing is great. We all know that. But it’s not always easy to get there. It needs lots of stuff to come together at the same time. We need to like what we’re making, who we’re making it for, what we’re making it with, how the  stitches go – there needs to be some good-enough balance of all those things so that you get the stitch momentum, and enough wind in your sails to get you there. It also needs to not slacken off before the end. But sometimes it does. What is that about?

Ok, I’m  just going to say it. Sometimes knitting gets boring. All that in-round-through-off, counting, row-finishing, row-starting-again, measuring, undoing, re-doing, still-not-being-finished. The repetitiveness isn’t doing the soothing, mindful thing for you anymore. It’s just dull. And perhaps in the meanwhile the object of your enterprise has lost its shine too. You’ve been working on it for ages but there’s still loads more to do.  You know its going to be her birthday soon but she won’t mind if it’s a bit late, and that colour they chose – it’s not really your thing. And also will he really appreciate all this effort? She said she wanted you to make something for her, but did she really get how much work it was going to be? 

Which is why, this wizened old knitter-shopkeeper will always encourage you to choose your wool and project with cautious care. There’ll be no rushing or pushing under my watch. Make sure you love it – the wool, the project, and definitely the person you’re making it for. It’s going to be a lot of stitches. Whatever it is there will be a lot. And they will take time. 

And that time can be the most gloriously delicious thing in the world, a journey that spirals its way slowly around shoulders, trunk, elbows and wrists, with stitch after beautiful stitch, plainly rolling on or perhaps with enchantingly textured twists, coloured motifs and intricately patterned holes. You’re going to transform balls of yarn into fabric with nothing but your fingers and your needles, you’re going to make a special thing and if that fabric delights you as it should, we don’t ever need to speak about this again.

But if the delight eludes you, for whatever reason, it’s not that it doesn’t end well. It’s that it, well… doesn’t end. So don’t let a misjudged project take you down the wrong knitting path. There is a perfect time to work out what to knit next and how to get it right, and happily it just happens to be now :o). 

There’s never been a better time to come and talk to Wild and Woolly’s Consultants for the Knittily Confused or Distracted. We’ll go through ideas, yarns and techniques together and work out something that will be just right. And your project will end well. We’ll make sure of that.

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