Projects and Process

Last week’s post was titled Marking the Time. This week’s might be called “Mark the Date.” In red, circled, highlighted, with big sparkly stars.

Something happened that almost never (ever!) happens. Before I tell you what it is, let me give you some information that will help you appreciate the significance.

When I first got into the online knitting community, there were big conversations about project knitting vs. process knitting.

People who identified as project knitters primarily knit because they wanted to make a specific object, either to own it or to give as a gift to a person already designated. Knitting is enjoyable, but is a means to the end of having or giving away something special. They have definite plans for what they make. They love wearing their creation and knowing “I made this!” They may have full closets and drawers of knitted items.

People who said they were process knitters were more interested in the techniques and activity of knitting itself rather than the object they produced. They might choose to make something because it appealed to them artistically without having any idea what they were going to do with the finished object. They love the practice of knitting and often have storage containers full of items ready to be gifted and/or friends and family who are well-stocked with all things knitted. They may not own much that they have knit themselves.

I’m a process knitter, 100%.

There are lots of advantages to being wired this way.

• I often had hand knit gifts at the ready for any occasion. In fact, I remember having over 30 dishcloths, a dozen ear warmers, and at least five pairs of fingerless mitts in my “gift tote” back when I was learning to make those items.
• I felt productive while learning new techniques and trying new yarns. There’s nothing wrong with trying out stitches and techniques on swatches, but I liked learning them on garments, as part of a whole. Plus, learning on a full garment means you usually get a lot of repetition on new skills.
• It’s a perfect mindset for commission knitting. I don’t even have to like what I’m making, because it’s the process that I enjoy most. That openness has given me incredible opportunities to learn and try things that I might never have done if I limited myself to what I would wear or gift.

While all that is true, one of the big drawbacks to process knitting is that it is often impractical. For example, some of those items stay in the gift tote for a long time before finding a home.

This impracticality shows up most often for me in timing. I finish cozy wool socks in May, just when the weather warms up. Ear warmers in July. Christmas tree skirts in February.

You get the picture.

This is the normal state of affairs. Either I’m frantically knitting to meet a deadline, or a pattern has randomly caught my attention, I work on it in an unhurried manner, and I finish it at a completely inappropriate time and have to pack it away with the hope that I’ll remember it when the appropriate time finally comes back around.

However, today is a different story!

My Amaryllis Cardigan is officially finished. All the ends are woven in, it’s had its bath, and the blocking process is complete. I started it in May after Greg returned from Italy with the yarn. Slowly but steadily, I’ve worked on it since then, and now it’s ready to wear. It is not going into a box or a tote, but straight to the closet. We’ve got lows in the 40s coming!

I feel like commemorating this event somehow.

You want to know what’s wild? It could happen again. I picked up the stitches for the first sleeve of my Rhinebeck sweater yesterday. I could, in theory, complete it before the first frost.

If I manage to finish that one and get it into the closet rotation before Spring, I may have to throw a party. (A quiet one, for two, with tater tots and ice cream. Because that’s how we roll.)

So, how about you? Are you a project or process knitter? A combination of the two, or maybe something else? Feel free to send me an email and tell me more!

Greg’s Got Questions:

Thank you to those of you who participated in the poll last week!

The winning question is:

Why does the Wheat Stitch Pumpkin use crochet instead of knitting?

This question has two answers, a simple one and a less simple one.

The simple answer is: Because that was the pattern designer’s choice. She wrote a crochet pattern, not a knitting pattern.

The less simple answer is that you can use either crochet or knitting to get a similar looking effect in the fabric. In both knitting and crochet there are techniques to put multiple stitches into one loop. Knitting often does it with yarn overs in between stitches into the same loop, crochet does it by placing multiple stitches into the same stitch.

In this pattern, all the multiple stitches are eventually gathered into one new loop/new stitch so the total stitch count remains the same, while all those extra created stitches bunch up to create a bump/puff/bobble in the fabric.

Some designers “think” more easily in crochet and others in knitting, and there are times when one craft fits a purpose better than the other. In this case, knitting and crochet both work well to create the kind of fabric that makes an adorable pumpkin. You can find lots of free pumpkin patterns online for each craft.

Greg’s Questions for This Week:

He had nine. Nine questions. Actually, he had more, but he squished some together and tried to pass them off as a single question.

Here are the ones up for the vote this week. I’ll answer the winner in the next newsletter. (As a matter of procedure, the poll function takes you to another page to submit your vote, so if that happens to you, you’re on the right track!)

Question 1: How does this alpaca yarn compare to the yarn that would come from our merino sheep?

Question 2: If you had to make a guess about your hundreds of readers, are more of them project or process knitters? Support your answer.

Question 3: Approximately how many ungiven gifts would you estimate are currently located in our basement? Dozens? Hundreds? Is it possible we could avoid all Christmas shopping this year? Please?

Happy knitting,

Kiersten J