Why am I calling this my “Not So Much Knitting Blog” lately? Probably because my knitting mojo is gone gone gone. I’m so tired, all the time, and knitting just isn’t fun anymore. I still love looking at patterns, fingering and even buying yarn, planning out projects, and sorting through the yarn stash.
I just am not loving the actual knitting.
It feels like just one more thing on my to-do list.
I’ve completed one lonely knitting project this year. Yes, you read that right. One. I’m embarrassed.
Can I be a knitter if I’m not knitting?
I don’t know.
What I do know, is that dealing with two toddlers 24/7 has me worn out. My wonderful husband has been pretty much absent lately, as work has been requiring 90+ hour weeks from him since Passover. I don’t understand it, but apparently they can get away with it. So, by the time I get the kids down at night, I pretty much collapse into a quivering puddle of exhaustion.
Knitting isn’t something that is interesting me. I wish it would. I miss the relaxation, the de-stressing, the feeling of accomplishment I used to get from knitting.
I trust that my mojo will return. I just don’t know when.
My friend Knitterary says sometime after the kids start school. I fear she may be right.
June 16th, 2010 at 11:27 pm
Oh Becca, it happens to us all. It will be okay. When your mojo DOES come back it will smack you in your face with extra soft merino;)
June 17th, 2010 at 4:15 pm
I found that even after the kids are gone my mojo faded. What has inspired me is that I have a student that is so jazzed that it keeps me on my toes. I found that I have to work through the patterns and translate the instructions in to simple Tagalo even though I do not speak it. Then I also have a little money on the side. I am thinking of getting in touch with Michaels to see if they offer one on one classes. Hummm a business of my own?? Becca you are a bad influence!!!! love Aunt Judy
June 17th, 2010 at 4:29 pm
Keep a project in the trunk of your car. Make it something fairly mindless–a sock that’s a long way from heeldom, a scarf that’s the same thing over and over. Just leave it in the car for some occasion when you’re out and find yourself having to kill time and wait. Car in the shop. Or you’re waiting for someone and you got there early. (Yeah, that may not happen while you have kids who haven’t graduated from college. My sister has just discovered that she’s not genetically prewired for tardiness.) Anyway, have a nice relaxing project that doesn’t take lots of concentration, something you can pick up, figure out where you are, knit for a bit, and stick it back in a bag for another couple of weeks. Or months. (Projects knitted in the round are ideal for this; you don’t ever “just need to finish this row.”) As long as you have a project on the needles, you’re still a knitter.
I get lots of knitting done–the benefit of having 4-footed kids instead of 2-footed ones–but I have a pair of socks I’ve been knitting on since January. At present, each sock is about 5 inches long. That’s not even one inch per month. But as long as they’re on the needles, when people ask what I’m knitting I can say, “I’m knitting a pair of socks.”
June 21st, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Dear NSMK,
TWO toddlers? No wondering your knitting mojo left, it’s a wonder all your mojo hasn’t left (maybe it has). It is true that someday you get to look at your stash and say, “I get to do anything I want”. I just won’t depress you by telling you how long that’s going to be.
June 22nd, 2010 at 3:21 am
Becca, how could you NOT be tired with so much to do — two toddlers and their dad isn’t able to be around a lot to help?
I’m almost 65 years old now, and I’ve gone through several spells of not feeling up to knitting or crocheting. Sometimes for a few years! At present, I’ve been back at it for about two years. It soothes me, helps take me away from all the pressures of the world, and makes me feel like I’ve made SOME kind of progress in days that are often chaotic and when nothing else seems to be going right.
If you really want to be knitting, though, how about some small projects? Maybe wash cloths for your kids? A little shrug for yourself? Hats at easy and fast.
If you’re worried that you have no motive to knit — although you’re very busy already, doing so much for others — those two little ones — how about if you make chemo caps or do some other type of knitting of little things for charity?
I keep mentioning small things because they don’t take long, and when you pick up your needles and yarn, you can see that you don’t have some impossibly-huge job to complete.
I really hate the saying “been there, done that,” but as one who has been there and done that, I’m telling you this: Most of all, whether you start knitting again or not, you absolutely MUST make some time for yourself. Just for you. If you don’t take good care of yourself, you won’t be able to take good care of anyone else.
Sending you good, good wishes.