Minimalism and Knitting

Indian Feathers

I have just completed two projects using lace weight yarn.  One was my travel knitting project for Britain, the other was the above project with the leftover yarn.  I got to thinking about how lovely it is to have a whole project's worth of yarn or two in one small ball.  And how I loved to work with fine yarns and spin fine yarns.  Then it occurred to me, I could minimize my knitting as I've minimized my wardrobe.

From now on, I will seek out only those projects that use fingering or lace weight yarns.  No longer will I need to purchase heavier yarns for a "someday" project.  In actual fact, I hardly ever use them for anything but always find a use for my sock yarns.  And let's face it, sock yarns are often the best looking yarns and most inspiring in a shop.

The benefits of this are many:

• Yarn stash takes up less space
• It narrows my yarn choices making it easier to shop 
• Less needles needed
• Less patterns needed
• Less notions needed such as large stitch markers

The Shetland Trader

While I was considering this idea, I wandered into a yarn shop.  I considered a few pattern books, a couple by one of my favorite designers (of whose books I love to buy but never knit from) when I came across another intriguing book, The Shetland Trader.  The name caught my attention because it is one place I'd like to visit when I go to Orkney again.  I debated. It was $7 more than the other pattern book and smaller.  Yet it had a little bit of intro about The Shetland Trader company, I always like a little story in a pattern book, blame it on my love of Elizabeth Zimmerman.  And then when I got down to it, the book had patterns in sock and lace weight.  

Sold.

So my thoughts of minimizing my knitting have come to fruition.  When next I go through my patterns and yarns, it'll all be a lot easier to weed out what I don't need anymore.  I'm not saying that I'll never knit with larger weight yarns again, just that I will only focus on the finer ones.  

Finer things in knitting - that's something that I can get on board with.