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When the Knitting Thrill Is Gone – Have You Lost Your Knitting Mojo?

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how to deal with loss of knitting mojoAfter I left About in the spring, I went through a period of not wanting to knit at all.

It has been such a big part of my life for almost 10 years, through three books and hundreds of articles, patterns, book reviews and tutorials.

It still is, but I just didn’t want to do it anymore once I didn’t feel like I had to.

I know that will sound strange to a lot of people — how can you ever not want to knit? — but when your creative outlets become your job, it’s tricky business to maintain the fire.

So I let it go. I didn’t pressure myself.

I started a couple of projects, none of which I’ve really finished (though a couple only need ends woven in, of course).

Now that the weather is getting a little cooler, I’m starting to feel that will to knit creeping back in. I have a giant, but simple, project on my needles. I’m ready to knit through the winter.

If you’ve ever lost your will to knit, you should know that it’s totally normal. And whether you have or you don’t think you ever will, you should read the piece “Of Knitting Mojo, Lost and Found” from Lee Ann Dalton in Twist Collective. It reminds us that shifts in energy and desire to knit are normal (though if you’ve lost your will to do anything, that’s a different problem).

For most of us, time spent not knitting does not mean lost income, so just let it go and trust that it will come back to you. Maybe on that first cool morning in October.

Have you ever lost your knitting mojo? I’d love to know what you did, if anything, to get it back, or what you do when you’re not feeling inspired to knit.

[Photo via Twist Collective.]

Comments

  1. Knit for charity. I’m in the UK and photos of children and babies in refugee camps in France or Greece spur me on to knit those warm blankets and clothes that may literally make the difference between life and death to a baby living in a tent in the snow. Homeless hostel 5m from me needs adult knitting too – so I never stop!

  2. As much as I love to knit, when the will to knit starts to go, I switch. I leave the knitting as is and work on a crochet project, or cross-stitch, or make jewelry. This way I never get bored and instead, see my knitting with refreshed eyes and a new perspective. It also helps to get together with my crafting friends. I met them on Meetup and our Meetup is open to all crafters so there is much to learn from each other.

  3. I separated from my husband last fall, suddenly and traumatically and it was all I could do to get through the day. Some days I would just hold the knitting, unable to focus to make a single stitch. When my desire to knit came back I knew I was turning the corner toward healing.

  4. As in life there are changes. This is not a bad thing it is how you handle these changes. So, give knitting a rest, garden instead, or do cross stitch, smocking, sewing, craft. Ask grandchildren if they would like something knitted scarf, fingerless gloves, head band etc.Even make some jam and add a pretty homemade label. Give one jar away.

Have you read?

Knit a Leopard Print Shawl and Learn about Yarn Substitution

When I was looking around for free knitting patterns to share recently, I came across this fun leopard print wrap from Yarnspirations. 

This fun bulky wrap gives you tons of practice with instarsia and makes a bold statement while keeping you warm. It’s rated for intermediate knitters and the design is charted but pretty easy to follow. And it’s only 50 rows and worked in bulky yarn, so it wouldn’t even take that long to knit. (You can grab the free pattern from Yarnspirations.)

So what’s the problem? The yarn that the pattern calls for has been discontinued, and it’s not a yarn that a substitute for immediately springs to mind. 

The original yarn was Patons Alpaca Blend, a single ply bulky yarn that was a combination of acrylic, superwash wool, nylon and alpaca. 

My first thought was Lion Brand Hue + Me, which is an acrylic and wool blend, with two plies instead of a single. It looks like it has the colors you would need to make this fun shawl. 

But as I was thinking about it, I thought this would be a good opportunity to introduce you to YarnSub if you don’t already know about it. This website is a giant database of yarn that can consider the qualities of the yarn you want to substitute and offer potential substitutions. 

It’s not only thinking about yarn weight, like I was, but also fiber content, number of plies, gauge and even the difference in yardage between one ball and another. It even looks at the price and can be filtered by your price range or preferences about fiber content (if, say, you’re sensitive or allergic to wool, for example, or don’t want to you acrylic). 

When I plugged in Alpaca Blend, it gave me a lot of different options, though many of them were self-striping or multicolored, which wouldn’t work for this project, and I don’t see a way to filter for solid colors only. 

Still, it’s a good tool to give you some ideas you might not know about or might have forgotten about, and it tells you how the new yarn is similar to the old one and how it differs, allowing you to make smarter choices when substituting yarns. 

[Photo: Yarnspirations]