How To Know When a Craft is Right For You

My quick answer is, when you don't mind the 'chores' very much. I used to paint, but I didn't like setting the palette and cleaning up. In comparison, I actually rather like untangling yarn.

There are the positives of why knitting works for me, of course, which essentially are how knitting fits my personality and the tempo of my life. I very much like being able to pick up my knitting at any moment I'm home and knit for a few stitches, or for a few hours. I like being able to put it down at any moment, and I like that I can work on it during trips. I like that it offers so much variety: I can do cables, lace, colorwork, entrelac, socks, blankets, circles, mosaics. I can start one kind of thing and it can grow. I like the flexibility -- my 'conditional knitting.' I love that I can do designs that require me to look at what I'm knitting, but not requiring me to follow a pattern, and that I can do all sorts of things with color, but I'm not forced to use multistranded layers.

And I love the wonderful yarn that is currently available. When I started knitting seriously, about 15 or so years ago, multicolored yarn was rare, and Noro hadn't shown up yet.

Knitting as a craft is right for me. Here is proof from back in my early days, when my head was full of Kaffe Fassett and his knitting designs.

Each cable is made up of two colors, with 4 stitches between each cable. The colors shaded in the cables from the outside to the middle, and so did the stitches between the cables. I count 44 different colors, and at the top, there were something like 84 separate balls hanging from the knitting as I worked across. The colors changed every 4 stitches, too, for the entire piece.

It took forever to put the colors in the proper sequences, then to make the small balls to knit from, and then to disentangle at regular intervals. I started from the bottom point, so I could learn to manage it as it grew.

Eighty-four balls which had to be changed every 4 stitches; and I didn't mind a bit. If that doesn't prove that knitting is right for me, then nothing will.