Artificial Deadlines

I love the blogging community and credit it for helping me to get my knitting mojo back after it left me for years. I do not have a local knitting group or even any local friends who knit. My knitting community IS the online knitting community. I have gained so much through my blog that it's hard to imagine knitting without all of you out there.

Over the past year I have received advice, gifts, encouragement, prayers, jokes, praise, and assistance from people scattered all over the world but connected through our computers. For all of that I am extremely grateful.

One downside to my online knitting participation is artificial deadlines. I'm just now starting to get over this. I know you all know what I mean. You get excited to find like minded individuals (like Nancy Bush knitters) and you join their group. You become excited to join your first KAL and you are thrilled to finish your product and share with everyone else. At some point, however, all those KALs can start to feel like something you have to do rather than something you want to do. I have found myself (and others) hurrying to finish a product to meet an artificial deadline set by an online group. This can make knitting much less enjoyable. I have to remind myself that unless I'm being paid commission to knit something or plan to give something as a gift there is no deadline.

Yesterday, I took a break from knitting (though I still managed to knit some rows) to read Water for Elephants. I didn't intend to read the entire book yesterday but the weather was perfect for sitting outside so I sat on my deck and read. I could not put the book down. If you haven't read it yet I highly recommend it. It's the best book I've read in a long time.

Today, I'll return to my socks which are "supposed" to be done by the end of the month. Perhaps they will be and perhaps they won't but I'm going to remind myself that I'm supposed to enjoy knitting them and that no knitting police will show up to take me away if I don't meet the "deadline".