2005 Knitting Aspirations* or "Rules"

On several of the blogs I've been reading lately, knitters have declared that they do not believe in New Year's resolutions, and therefore will not be posting about knitting resolutions on their blogs. I admire these folks, because most of their messages imply that they are the kind of organized, balanced people who don't need a resolution to get a particular task accomplished and who don't see the wisdom of getting all riled up for a few weeks in January over nothing. While I share the sentiment, and have no intentions of promising myself to do the impossible, I do think that it is useful to think about what I want to accomplish a few times a year and take the time to write it down. I'm also a traditionalist and a ruminator at heart, so times like the first of January, the beginning of spring, and say, fall, when kids go back to school (because that wasn't so long ago, right?) seem like good times to do it. Lists, particularly public ones, help spur me into action.

This knitting year has been an extremely atypical one for me. The discovery of knitting blogs, followed shortly by starting one of my very own, managed to turn my knitting on it's head. Witness:

1. Although I have had quite a stash for a while now, prior to 2004 I worked on one project at a time and only started something new when I had finished or officially abandoned the previous project. Last spring I had as many as 13 UFOs on the needles.

2. Although I knit a fair amount every year, there used to be not only days, but even months when I did not knit. In 2004, from the period between March and mid-September, there were exactly two days that I did not knit. (The mere fact that I know this for certain is frightening.)

3. It is my normal pattern to focus particularly on one of my extracurricular activities (knitting, reading, photography, running and cycling are the big ones) over the others for a few months at a time while continuing the others at a less frequent interval. After a while I switch to the next thing for a couple months, focus, then move on. It creates a sort of "season" for each thing I do. This year the focus was on knitting for the entire year. My other activities continued, but reading (the activity that is most similar in nature and therefore most easily usurped) got neglected. Well, except for reading about knitting - that was at an all-time high...

Although it has been a wonderful resource in many ways and introduced me to a whole world (literally) of amazing people, blogging added a frenetic energy to my knitting that I have been working steadily to rid myself of. I feel that I have done a fairly good job of getting things under control. In the early summer, I resolved to get down to 5-7 projects by fall. I did that, and currently have only 3 projects on the needles. (As Carrieoke would say, "Yay Me!"). When we moved from California and took our trip across country to Lake George, I didn't touch a computer for a week and a half, and didn't blog for about three weeks. I worked toward finishing current (and often stale!) projects rather than starting new ones. I instituted a plan of only joining Knit-Alongs if they were really things I had already planned to do, rather than getting swayed by the bright lights of other bloggers' project choices. I've cut back on surfing, and only have 20 blogs at a time in my bloglines rotation. A couple of times a month I allow myself to surf around and see what all the others are doing. My stash is unreal, and always will be. I know myself well enough to know that I am never, ever going to knit it all. But I make a point of knitting from the stash first if I can make a good substitution on a pattern, and I set a yarn budget and stay within it. Collecting is a typical feminine habit, and since yarn is the only thing I collect, I'm Zen with it.

As well as I've done pulling myself back together, I feel I can do better. The point of starting a blog was to create a space to foster and track my creativity, that would hopefully serve as a resource for a handful of other people. I planned to use it as a mechanism to learn more about my own craft, and to create and ultimately publish all the designs that have been stumbling around in my head for so many years. The one thing I have not been good about is executing and submitting designs for publication. I get easily side-tracked by other designers' work and ideas and find myself seduced away from my own projects way too readily. The goals of my list are to focus my knitting on design, learning new techniques, and giving (this year has taught me that charity knitting is important and can make a difference - look at all those Afghan squares!) and to restore more balance in the rest of my life (so I can read those back issues of the New Yorker and finish The Namesake, and run the Cherry Blossom 10 miler in the spring at a decent pace rather than simply completing it).

To accomplish that, here is my list of rules, or more correctly, aspirations. They are "organic" and sometimes contradictory. But so is balance.**

K.R.1.01. I aspire to have no more than 7 projects on the needles at one time.

K.R.1.01a. If I have 5 projects going, 2 of those must be for publication.

K.R.1.01b. If I have 7 projects going, 3 must be my own designs, whether for publication or not.

K.R.1.02. Only 2 projects may be "commercial" designs.

K.R.1.02a. "Commercial" does not include designs by friends or projects that are so little that they're done in a few days - it predominantly refers to BIG projects. All bloggers are "friends" even if they don't know me! Hence, Annie Modesitt is in the "friend" category - I love ya, Annie! The Commercial Restriction (see K.R.1.02) does not include Knit-Alongs, as long as: i) the number of what would normally be "commercial" KAL designs does not cause the number of total commercial designs to exceed 4; AND ii) I have 3 original designs on the needles.

K.R.1.02b. Any commercial design that I knit must either i) employ some technique or construction that I haven't used before; or ii) be so stunning that I just can't stand not to make it.

K.R.1.02c. I aspire to always have 1 project that is a "learning" project - e.g. very challenging lace, intarsia, etc. If a commercial pattern is challenging enough to be a learning project it can be added even if I have 2 commercial projects on the needles, but only if I have less than 7 projects started.

K.R.1.03. I aspire to usually have one long term (perhaps year-long) big project on the needles.

K.R.1.04. Very small projects - hats, mittens, tea cups, etc. count as half a project, but only up to 2. (A tea set is a whole project.)

K.R.1.05. I aspire to knit more for charity. Charity knitting never counts as a project and can and should be added at any time.

K.R.1.06. Small gifts never count as a project and can be added at any time.

K.R.1.07. To help keep track of the Rules (and becasue I am a big geek and like labels), I will label my projects in the sidebar as one of the following:

Design,
Freebie (design not for publication),
Commercial (new technique),
Commercial (must have),
KAL,
Learning,
Small Project,
Long Term Project,
Friend,
Charity,
Gift.

K.R.1.08. I will make a point of alternating older and newer projects.

K.R.1.09. I will find creative ways to make use of my scraps. An annual teeny tiny sweater making festival at Christmas may be in order.

K.R.1.10. I will blog regularly, but not maniacally. No less than once a week, no more than three times a week. Vacations don't count.

Them's the rules, or, er, aspirations. I suppose next January we can look back and see how well I've done.

*In law, there are a whole slew of ethical rules that are gathered from a bunch of different sources which you have to be aware of in order to practice. (I know, it's hard to believe given our reputation as a profession!) Ironically, despite this plethora of seeming regulation, many of the rules are actually merely "aspirations" - whatever that means. Personally, I've long found it a little pathetic that lawyers can't just get their acts together and simply commit to having some scruples. However, when faced with my own list of rules, I kind of got the point. There are times when we really wish we could do something, yet we suspect we might not be able to. We wish we could do it so much that we write it down, for all to see, and call it a "rule". Still, we're not really sure that in the final analysis we'll be able to come through. Enter "aspiration". Rather brilliant, and lawyerly, in addition to being pathetic.

**The Ethical Rules are numbered E.R.1.01, etc. To keep form, the Knitting Rules are numbered K.R.1.01, etc. I was going to do the rules in lawyerspeak to boot, but I was unsure you'd make it as far as this footnote even without the gibberish, and didn't want to press my luck!

Posted by Julia at January 3, 2005 10:33 PM
In main

Copyright Julia Trice, 2004-2006. All rights reserved.