Product VS Process

Yesterday, as I was finishing Sam’s hat (after reclaiming mine) I was thinking that I hadn’t enjoyed knitting it all that much. I didn’t dislike it (how could you not like knitting?) but it wasn’t the ten buckets of fun that knitting usually is – especially when you’re making something someone will love and wants badly.

samhaton 2015-01-21

Sam does, indeed love her new hat, and wore it out this morning, cozy against the windy cold.  (Pattern: Wurm, Yarn: Eco+ in Dark Purple – I think. Needle 3.5 and 4.5mm. Knit as written, except for only doing 8 repeats. We like our Wurms a little less wormy round here.)

samhatpeek 2015-01-21

After she left, I sat down to have a coffee and a bit of a knit, and pulled out the sweater I’ve had cruising along in the background. (This one.)  It’s going fine, though it’s now just rounds and rounds of stockinette, and I felt that same… something.  I love that yarn, and heaven knows I want the sweater – now, actually, it’s so dismally cold, and usually that’s enough to inspire, but this time, I’m not feeling it. As I was churning along, my thoughts turned to the idea of knitting for product (to get the knitted stuff) and knitting for process – because I love knitting alone.  Usually I’m someone who fails to land firmly in either camp. I knit for both. To get good stuff, and for the pure pleasure of it. I don’t know if I would be arsed to knit if there wasn’t the thrill of a finished thing at the end, and I don’t know that the things alone would be enough to make knitting worth it. (I have a secret theory that liking and needing knitting to be both for product and process spawns the most dedicated knitters – those of us who couldn’t stop if we wanted to, but it’s just an idea.)

It hit me, as I was beavering away that it’s been a little while since something was on my needles for nothing but pleasure. That the last few months have been – what with Christmas and all that, all about the product.  A string of needed, wanted, important things, but still the goal was to end up with the things… not to just be along for the ride. I thought about that some more, as I completed another round, and then I looked around me, saw my spinning wheel, and something gave way.

I’ve been hearing the siren song of my spinning stash for a while – if you can call the smothered gasps of way too much fibre a song. I put down the sweater, went up to the spinning stash, and grabbed the first thing that appealed.

intowhirledbatt 2015-01-21

I’m going to spin for a bit. I don’t even know what I’m making, but i know that the minute that whatever sort of yarn this batt becomes, it’s going on my needles moments later. I’m going to think about process, the process of spinning, the process of knitting, and I’ll just see what product I get at the end.

Doesn’t that sound delicious?

(PS. The Batt is from Into the Whirled – though I don’t see any on their website right now.)