Saying Goodbye To Second Sock Aversion and Self Guilt

        As part of my New Years Resolution I have begun to not only knit more often but to complete the projects that I start. Now I know that I am not the only knitter who starts projects and keeps them on the needles for a bit longer than they planned but I honestly have so many WIP's that I can no longer keep track of them and that is a problem for me. I have made myself promise that from this point on I will keep my projects down to a more manageable number and I will either work on them until they are finished or I will frog them and move on to something else.

   
         Just a week ago I started working on a pair of socks for my pen pal in the Netherlands. In the past when I have tried to knit socks I'd either cast on the specified number of stitches in my pattern, think "There is no way on earth that this is enough stitches for my wide calf's", then I'd cast on way too many stitches or I'd knit one sock (usually a baby sock) and immediately dread the thought of picking up and knitting another one. I had turned sock knitting into a chore and because of this I allowed myself to push the hundreds of beautiful sock patterns in my collection aside and left my sock yarn in my stash neglected and unloved.

          Notice the giant sock calf that I am knitting this normal sized sock from. I was able to get more than twice the length from it!

           This time around however, I am finding myself actually enjoying the process. In fact I finished one sock and immediately cast on the other without giving it a second thought which is totally abnormal for me. I have also found that I am progressing in the second sock a lot faster than I did in the first. Now I hoping that this is not the case but in the past I have found that I have an easier time knitting for other people than for myself. This is directly linked to the fact that I have always had a love hate relationship with myself and I've always felt that making things for myself would make me appear selfish and self centered.

         This seems pretty strange even to me because I have never seen anyone else who knitted things for themselves as selfish, in fact my knitting hero Tasha from By Gum By Golly, regularly knits amazingly beautiful and equally intricate 1930's-1960's sweaters, hats, and gloves for herself and I adore it. For whatever reason I choose to neglect myself I have decided this year that I would no longer. After I finish the items that I have planned for my pen pal (mostly to get rid of the wool that I bought before going vegan) I am going to finish the 3 sweaters that I have started to slowly allow to creep into the cave of hibernating projects and then I am going to knit myself a pair of boot socks. I am going to finish them in reasonable amount of time and I am going to enjoy them and take pride in being able to knit clothing for myself.

         Have any of you ever felt this way either about knitting socks or knitting for yourself in general? If so then let me know in the comments how you realized you had this problem and what you did to solve it. I shall leave a link to my sock project on ravelry here. Feel free to hold me accountable to my goals.

    To 2017, The year of acknowledging self worth and building self love!