I firmly believe that one of the reasons that craftspeople have so many simultaneous projects (and textile artists are particularly guilty of this) is that they are actually ADD on some level and this is the way in which they manage their focussing abilities. I’m definitely a multi-project kind of person. I go through fits of starting a lot of things, juggling them all manically, with a reasonable degree of success, and then finishing them all in a flurry.

Maybe actually finishing them makes me a bit of an oddity, at least among knitters. I don’t have UFOs any more. I decided at sometime in the not-so-distant past that unfinished projects, just sitting there, took up too much of the space-time continuum.  I spent too much storage space on things that weren’t done and probably never would be and time was wasted finding a place for them to live, agonizing over their existence and then feeling the associated guilt that goes with an unfinished project.

So one spring, I got rid of the things that would never get done. I got rid of the yarn I would never knit. I ditched the patterns and fabric that would never be used. Anything that was worth keeping got moved to the “Finish Me Now” pile and completed. Projects that had materials worth saving but in which the actual project itself was a write-off got frogged and the yarn reused.

Why do I bring this up now? Well, I just realized that I am at the beginning of a new round of “starts”. I am starting the dyeing of rovings and yarns, which will soon fill up ever cranny of the studio. I have started two baby sweaters (both the same pattern, one blue, one ivory) for the twins of a friend, a pair of socks, a sweater for myself and just picked up the wool to start another sweater for myself, one I’ve been wanted to do for some time (Must Have Cardigan).  I have just gone from the aftermath of Christmas, which saw the completion of some 26 projects (pictures below) and the correspondingly empty wool shelves and tidy studio, to complete chaos. Funny how good chaos feels…..