Sometimes it's like falling in love. Everything about your intended is perfect: the pattern, the colour, the yarn ... Everything. You can't wait to cast on, and you resent any interruption that takes you away from your love.
Last time I fell in love that way was with a cardigan. I lugged a ridiculously large cardigan around with me for ages, just so we could snatch a few stolen minutes together on the train. I loved the pattern, I loved the way the yarn felt in my hands as I worked on my cardie. But like most intense and passionate love affairs, it didn't last. When I was nearly at the end, I found out how the 7% angora in my yarn was likely produced. I finished the jumper, but I have never worked with that yarn again. My beloved was not quite as ethical as I had believed.
I still like that cardigan, but these days I think of it more with affection than with passionate attachment. Thank goodness, because such passion can be exhausting.
Some of my projects are chosen with more of the head than the heart. I'll be leafing through a pattern book and come across a pattern, and think: "That is a new technique, I want to try that". Or an new method of construction, or a new stitch pattern I haven't tried before. I'll cast on and knit with a cool intellectual rigour, working and thinking until the lightbulb moment. "Oh, so,this is how you do it!" Often, once I've finished the project, I'll give it away.
The year I leaned to knit socks, I made pairs of socks for nearly everybody in the family until I felt really had a grip on what I was doing. My mother, sister and brother-in-law all got socks for Christmas, and my father got hand-knitted socks for his birthday. I won't be doing that again, since they (are a bunch of ingrates who don't appreciate hand-knitted socks) have enough socks for now.
I also kept a pair or two or three for myself, because I appreciate hand-knitted socks.
Sometimes I'll cast on a project with half an idea, and knit until I get an idea of how it's going to work out. They project either makes it, or it doesn't.
I also knit for other people, on occasion. Mostly people will tell me what they want, mostly specifying the colour, and I knit it. I knitted Jan and Kathy a pair of Western Bulldogs socks each, and Heather a pair of dark green socks in "Dispute Stitch".
The biggest challenge is when I am knitting a gift for someone, with no idea of whether they will like it. I knitted a pair of Cherry Stitch socks for my friend Cherry. They started out as a bit of a "where is this going" experiment, but along the line it felt right that it become a gift for Cherry. I hoped she would like them, and luckily she did. I also knitted a baby jacket for her son, Little C, because I thought it was so cute, and he was the only baby I had to knit for. Again, luckily his Mum and Grandma loved the jacket. Right now I am knitting Cherry a scarf, as a thank you for our friendship. Part of me is anxious about whether she will like it, but my rational brain tells me she will. I have picked a colour that she wears, and anyway Cherry understands that it is knitted with love.
Cherry appreciates hand-knits.
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