Winner for 5 DECEMBER 2011 - Eirwen due to Lesley being a lovely sweetheart. Next draw will now be in January.
Win my new Socktopus book, and enter a draw to win a pair of socks, custom fit and hand knit by yours truly. Help out Hong Kong Dog Rescue by donating to help them rescue, rehabilitate and rehome abandoned dogs. More details here.
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!! 
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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.
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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.
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