Product or Process?

My current project is the Romance Ruffle-Collar Shell designed by Irina Poludnenko for Tahki Yarns. I saw it completed in The Wool Basket and fell in love with it.



What do you think?
Should I add sleeves?

I have the back done and I am
half-way up one of the fronts . . . and I will confess to you . . . I don't really like working on it. Because of the incongruities in the yarn (which is one of the things I love in the completed project), I am finding it hard to maintain a grip in my right hand and keep a tension. But I already have a dress to wear with the finished shell.





So as I was working on it this morning and suffering in silence (well my husband doesn't really want to listen to me and there wasn't another knitter around!), I started to think about 'process' vs. 'product' knitting.






The rhythmic clicking of needles and the feel of yarn between my fingers always made me think I was a process knitter. I have worked out many problems in my life while my needles clicked away . . . (perhaps Congress should knit while they are in session) . . . or, if my pattern was hard enough to demand my full concentration, I could at least escape them for awhile! 

While I sit and knit I often picture my work once it is completed. Will my husband love it? Will my son/daughter wear it? Won't it look nice on one of my friends? If it is a gift, I try and knit a little wish of love and good health in between each stitch for the recipient.

Sometimes I like a complicated pattern. The challenge of multiple colors or cables added to following a graph and keeping track everything going on in one row . . . I feel like I am putting my brain to use! But sometimes I need a 'no think' project. I need to just work stockinette or an easy pattern that I already have memorized.

I must be a process knitter.

So I will often have two projects going at the same time . . . but I always finish them. (In fact I'll stress with more than two!) My closet is not crowded with sweaters left languishing on the needles. I love that feeling when the last end is woven in and the item is done. I quickly snap a picture of it and rush to post it on Ravelry. Ah, such completion.

I must be a product knitter.

Hmm . . . I don't know. Can you be both?

What do you think? Which are you?

Until next time, keep your nose in book or your fingers in fiber.