I've been suffering from a huge case of Startitis. For the record this is a disease that knitters suffer from, initially identified and documented by the Yarn Harlot. You can read more about it here and here on her blog. It hit me immediately after the holiday season festivities finished. Symptoms include many skeins of yarn, books and needles that have somehow migrated out of the spare bedroom where they normally live and into the living room where I normally knit. A secondary symptom seems to be related to doing more thinking about knitting than actually knitting real projects. The final clue is the high volume of swatches that have begun to pile up with no related project on the needles. Hmmm, what exactly is going on?
The biggest problem is that the onset seems to have started at the same time that I started working through some New Years resolutions about limiting the number of projects that I work on. It's almost as though I'm rebelling against my own goal setting process! I have noticed that high project numbers seem to lead directly to high UFO numbers which is why I want to curb this behaviour. UFO's may be a symptom or perhaps a related form of the disease. More research is required to determine which. I think this may be one of those diseases that can't be cured but will benefit from careful management.
Wikipedia says: "Disease management is defined as a system of coordinated health care interventions and communications for populations with conditions in which patient self-care efforts are significant."
I have been showing new and frightening symptoms:
ReplyDeleteFROGGING things to start new ones.
WHY? I have plenty of yarn and there's nothing really wrong with the projects I've frogged. And then after it's off the needles I suddenly lose interest in starting something new OR finishing the old item. It's like some weird mutated virus! EEK!
Just a thought: perhaps your life as a designer, and your life as a knitter have different creative stages. I don't think you are slouching off if you are exploring ideas in lots of swatchs, or batch processing the ideas but not writing at the moment.
ReplyDeleteHere's a cross pollination link from scrapbooking http://stacyjulian.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=57&Itemid=140
I'd love to hear what you think about it.
I don't personally think I can sustain production mode all the time, but it's hard to decide when my frustration is legit, and when it's false guilt.
Of course, then there is business worries, different category all together.
I recognize the symtoms and appreciate your agony -- even did a post in my blog (Knitting Footnotes) once about my solution. I've been using this approach for over a year and find it very workable. Most of the time now I can keep my WIPs down to six baskets: http://knittingfootnotes.blogspot.com/2010/11/tisket-tasketa-project-for-each-basket.html
ReplyDeleteHope you can get to the above since I don't know how to create a link in this comment.
Hey, at least you're swatching rather than just diving in!
ReplyDeleteI'd say there is nothing wrong with you. :-) Now there is a time for stockpiling swatches & UFOs, and there will come a time for finishing projects. :-))
ReplyDeleteHave a good & healthy 2012!