I’ve been pondering WIPs/UFOs lately, how we, as knitters, view them and react to them. I admit readily I have a fair few. I get urges to cast on – either because I really want to see how the yarn turns out (Anemoi), or because there is a technique I want to try/figure out (Mad Color Weave). Looking at my projects, I tend to knit in two patterns: 1) obsessive knitting focussed on the sole project, usually finished in a week or less (this is also how I read); and 2) interested knitting, non-monogamous, leaving the project as something else piques my interest. Very few of these, in my heart of hearts, are abandoned – to my mind they are ‘resting’. Single socks are evenutally paired but sometimes it can take a while (Kaw Kaws were a year in the making). I’m pretty self indulgent with knitting – I always go with what my knitting muse tells me, and can’t deny her! She’s too persuasive. Besides, knitting for me is supposed to be fun, and that means doing what i like! 
There are times when too many WIPs overwhelms me; I feel like there is so much i want to knit, but too little time to knit it all. Existential crisis! But on the whole I find it pretty exciting to have lots of colour and different projects to choose from. I do know however that this is not true for all. I know others who cannot have too many WIPs and instead of a source of glee they become a source of stress, or guilt. How do you find WIPs? Source of unbridled joy? Guilty pleasure? or plain old stress?
David is working late again – so tonight it’s just me and the monkey. He’s being very clingy today. He thinks that my lap is his right! Today I got my STR order – Oma Desala! Yay!! Waiting now for Wollmeise… and a big treat in the post – a letter from my goddaughter with a Socktopus and a Whale! Thank you Sophia!! 
{ 1 trackback }
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I always find that I have one main project, which I will gleefully abandon for whatever catches my fancy whenever I’m at a boring bit or near the end. The projects I cast on during these big projects fall into 2 camps, either I knit obsessively for 2-3 days and finish them, or end up frogging them as I haven’t been paying enough attention and have cast on the wrong number of stitches, ribbing gone wrong, or wrong size needles.. or a combination of all three.
My normal knitting falls into your pattern 1: obsessively and done in a week or so. In fact, if I haven’t touched a WIP in more than a few days, it probably means it won’t be finished. This means I’m essentially only ever working on one WIP at a time.
However, because I’m ramping up my designing, I unfortunately tend to think of unfinished design concepts as WIPs. Lots and lots of swatching, sketching, poring through pattern dictionaries. Until I either solidfy an idea into a full design proposal or give it up as unworkable, I get vague guilty feelings about not working on them.