You Don't Have to Finish That Knitting Project

I had a customer once who took a class on short rows. She came into the shop looking for more yarn to finish the scarf, because she'd run out. I didn't have any more.

I asked her what she wanted to do about it. She said she didn't care -- she just wanted whatever she needed to finish it.

"Do you love knitting this project?" I asked.

"No. I kind of hate it."

"Are you excited to wear it?"

"No. I will never wear it."

"So why are you so bent on finishing it?"

"What do you mean? I have to finish it."

"Why?"

"Because I just do. What would I do with it if I didn't?"

"What will you do with it if you do?"

She didn't have an answer for that one.

"What should I do?" she asked.

"Throw it out," I said. "It was yarn you used to learn and practice a skill. You've gotten from it what you needed to get from it. You can just toss it."

"You mean throw it away?"

"Yes."

"I couldn't."

"No? Would you like me to throw it away for you?"

"Oh, yes," she said, obviously relieved.

So I did.

I don't think she ever thought about it again. The decision and the guilt just stopped being hers to bear alone. And then it was gone. The project, the yarn, the guilt. But the learning stayed.

Here's what she'd actually gotten from that class: short rows. A real, portable, useful technique she'll use in lots of projects. That was hers now, no matter what happened to the scarf. The scarf itself, or the part of it she'd knit, had already done its job the moment she learned the technique. Finishing it was never actually required to get what she came for -- I just never said that part out loud.

In that class, and in classes like it, I hand out the full pattern in case someone falls in love with it and wants to keep going. But I never say, explicitly, that finishing is optional. I assume it. She assumed the opposite -- that a full pattern in hand meant a finished object was the goal, and anything short of that was failure. I meant to be generous. She felt it as an obligation.

So here's the permission you might need to hear: you don't have to finish it. Not every project owes you a finished object to have been worth casting on. Ask yourself two questions about whatever's sitting half-done in your project bag: have I already gotten what I needed from this, whether or not I ever bind off -- and if I finish it, will it become something I actually love and wear. A yes to the first is permission enough on its own -- that's exactly what happened with the scarf. A no to the second is permission enough on its own too.

Either way, here's the last piece, the one that's harder to say out loud than "throw it out" ever was: you're not getting the money back either way. That money was already spent the day you bought the yarn. Keeping the project on the needles doesn't earn you anything. It just adds guilt on top of a decision that's already been made, whether you've admitted it to yourself yet or not.

I have a pile of my own projects I've been meaning to sort through the same way -- honestly, out loud, one at a time. I'll show you what I found when I do.

If you want to see it, subscribe to my YouTube channel so you don't miss it.

Warmly,
~Ellen