Plagued by UFOs

I want to spin. Really, I do. My wheel is in working order, I have plenty of fiber from various breeds and species of animals, both dyed and undyed. I've got a nice chair, and lots of music or movies that I could put on to listen to while I relax with my dear friend Miss Ashford.

Why am I not spinning, then?

For a few weeks, I've been having something akin to writer's block. There are some ideas happening, but when the time comes to translate them into yarn, things aren't going so well. My last experiment was spinning mohair from the lock. Things didn't go the way I planned. Granted, that was my first time spinning anything from locks, and slippery mohair might not have been the best choice, but my desire to spin wouldn't have fled entirely due to a single failed experiment.

No, I think it's something else. Part of the problem is that I have an enormous backlog of handspun from my honeymoon with Miss Ashford. I could not spin enough, and I had so many ideas that I needed to try, and techniques to work out, and fun new plans to help me improve at my new hobby. It was great fun. But now there's all this yarn. Just sitting around, and I feel guilty about delaying all these skeins on their way to their final destiny as a knitted or crocheted object.

Another part of the problem is that I have lots of commercial yarn. And I have lots of ideas of things I want to make. So many things, in fact, that I have a notebook of ideas and fledgling patterns and notes on patterns and an order in which I think things should be done to best comply with seasonal wearability. Unfortunately, like most people, I have limited crafting time due to my necessary but inconvenient full time job at which knitting (even while performing actual work) is frowned upon. So I prioritize. At the moment, my priority is on finished goods. On following through with items that have been wandering around the house, from basket to basket, still impaled on needles many months after their inception.

I love yarn. It's why I started spinning in the first place. Indeed, it's why I took up crochet and then knitting. Yarn is amazing stuff. I wanted to work with it and to make things out of it and then to be able to make it myself, controlling all the variables. But, as great as it is, yarn isn't a finished product. Outside of making something else from it, it's not something that I can use in my everyday life, like socks or mitts or a potholder. Until it becomes a finished object, it's just string. Beautiful, soft string, inherent with so much promise and potential...

But I digress!

Starting a new project right now (like the Romney socks) would be just another way of putting off finishing all those poor, neglected socks and scarves and mitts and sweater swatches. That's right. I have unfinished swatches. I'm not going to lie to you about it.

I need some closure. Time to go make that happen.