The Great Week of Finishing

I love knitting. I love the sensory experience behind hearing the click of the needles, the feel of the yarn as it slides through my hands, and the visual of seeing the fabric get created right before my eyes. My two favorite moments in knitting are casting on a new project and casting off the last stitches on a piece I’ve been working and weaving in those ends. Blocking and finishing steps are the bane of my knitting existence, especially now that I’ve figured out how to manage my ends as I go so that I don’t have a lot of weaving in to do once I bind off. I would do almost anything to avoid finishing steps, except that I love how the yarn and the project blooms as it is properly treated. Even blocking is not a huge chore, as I’ve gotten in the habit of it. But heaven forbid I have to sew on a button! That is where this (fairly disciplined) knitter falls down on the job; sewing on buttons is just not fun for me. My WIP (work-in-progress) bag doesn’t have projects on needles; it only contains items that need to be blocked or to have that last button sewn on.

Enter the Week of Finishing.

I’ve decided that once a month or once every two months, I’m going to do a Week of Finishing. Projects on the needles shall be ignored while everything else gets blocked and has finishing touches put on it. For this week, I have three shawls, three cowls, a vest, and a few other projects that need finishing. Anything that does not get finished in this week may be finished at a later date or may be put off until the next Week of Finishing. I’ve already started by getting three cowls fully soaked and out on my blocking mats. From there, I need to sew buttons on one cowl, and the other two need cotton snaps sewn onto them. The vest, once blocked, needs to be sewn up and then it will be considered a finished object. I’m excited to see how many projects I can finish in this week so that they are off my brain for all time!