It’s As Good to Have Half-Finished Projects as It is to Have Half-Finished Books

Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know…Umberto Eco

I don’t know about you, but I’m one of those knitter/crocheters (and writer/readers, for that matter) who begins a project and gets so freaking inspired by the work of it that I come up with another project. I get so inspired by that project, that another one is birthed. You know what I’m talking about? Can you relate? I read something wonderful, learn a truth, sit the book down and go out to try out this truth on the world around me. I do the same with crochet and knitting, but especially, with crochet. I want to test this new found stitch on other projects. I want to see if the physics of it really work on my unique shape, one someone else’s baby, on any American couch.

It’s true, what we already know is done, and we get stuck there, repeating ourselves. It’s in the unknowing that the possibilities of creation exist. This idea was first suggested to me (via a beautiful article at BrainPickings) about the late Umberco Eco’s personal home library. He said that he constantly surrounded himself with books he hadn’t yet read, because the ones he’d already read had given him all they could give him. It was the ones with new secrets and information that expanded his mind and worldview. They’re what made his creativity grow.

It’s the same for me with the needle arts. What I begin, begats more.

It would be so fantastic to be able to say that I COMPLETE each project before I BEGIN another one, but that would be a flat-out lie. I just sit down the first inspiration and start working on the next one. Eventually, I complete them all, but not like the one-project-Sallys do. I’m a grazer of the needle arts. I figure, I have ten fingers. Why should I be just working on one project at one single time?

Do you do the same? Do you read that way as well? If you’re a reader, and one that likes complicated story lines that make your brain explode, might I suggest Focault’s Pendulum by Eco? I love this book so much. It took me forever to read it. I had to break it up into pieces, taking one section at a time and sometimes re-reading it before I could move onto the next. But the pace of it, the spookiness of it, really intrigued me. I mail it to book snobs, because they can’t ever figure it out and it puts them in their place. Who can argue with someone probably should have been awarded Nobel Prize? Who can say their hard-worked story sucks? You just can’t. Not if you’re a decent human being anyway who has an ounce of humility.

I feel the same about needle arts. If you’re an artist, you should continue to surround yourself with the unfinished stuff and pick it back up when the synapses inspire you so. Needle art is not a piano concerto. You don’t have to keep moving in a linear direction to finish the work.  And DON’T shrink from calling yourself an artist if you’re one who works off pattern and gets lost in your own crazy ideas while new ones are forming. That’s the very definition of art, unfinished ideas continuously bubbling outward like a live sourdough ball. If it’s alive, it will grow. If it’s dead, it’s circle has been completed. There’s nothing wrong with finishing. Give that thing away, or wear it around town, but that shouldn’t stop you from more work.

“I believe all sin, love, glory are this: when you slide down the knotted sheets, escaping from Gestapo headquarters, and she hugs you, there, suspended, and she whispers that she’s always dreamed of you. The rest is just sex, copulation, the perpetuation of the vile species.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

All of that being said, I do have quite a few new finished patterns coming up to share with you all soon. Two will be free, three more fee-based, and I’ll be giving away a yarn kit, which I’m really excited about. Just one. There will be a contest, with vague rules, but the three of you who read this blog will have a high chance of winning it.

As you know, I also I tend to pair my work with a classic movie, which I review on Fridays (or, I should say, when I was working on that classic-movie-paired-project-thingy I posted it on Fridays. I believe the last post was when I reviewed Rosemary’s Baby about two years ago and paired it with this lovely green tunic sweater, which I gave to a passing stranger in the library. She really liked it. It was done and, therefore, pretty much dead to me. I have no self-control when it comes to blessing people with handiwork). Anyway, new movie review coming. Project-in-progress coming with that. Have a looksee at all that is coming your way soon. The resolution could be better on these, but I like shiny objects, and so I’m reluctant to give up the nifty video for sharper images.

And this lovely throw, which I started two years ago. Yes, you read that correctly. Two years ago. You’ll see it soon, and the pattern will be for sale in The Shop.

Celtic Black and White Throw

Come back soon to see my useless review of a classic movie, which is to say, a movie that has already been reviewed six hundred times in 60+ years. But, we all love a good Bogie/Davis film, right? If you can guess which one I’m talking about, I’ll mail you a million dollars before sunset. I’ll show you the sweater it inspired, too. You might find that a little more important to your needs.