omorka | Feeling Productive

Let me here stop and say, just for the record, that I'm a product fibercrafter.

For those of you who aren't familiar with this particular dichotomy, a product knitter (or crocheter, or weaver, or . . . ) is one who pursues her or his fibercraft so that they can have the finished objects produced by the craft. You look at a pattern for a particularly clever hat, you say "hey, my MIL needs a hat, and that's pretty," and off you go, with the end result being a nice warm fuzzy thing you can hand to her in the hospital. (For instance.)

The other type is the process knitter (crocheter, etc.), who pursues her or his fibercraft for the sheer joy of knitting/crocheting/whatever. A process knitter will look at a particular skein of yarn and need to know what it feels like around the needles, or pick up a new technique for the sake of trying it out. They find the feel of the craft itself soothing, or even meditative.

Now, very few people are pure examples of either type. Someone who was purely a product crafter would take little or no joy in the feel of the yarn and the needles, and in the long run would probably be better off getting someone else to do it and paying them for it. Someone who was purely a process crafter would become bored with each project as s/he mastered the technique, got used to the yarn, etc., and thus would leave pile after pile of unfinished projects behind hir, never completing anything. (For those of you who are Myers-Briggs fans, yes, there's a little bit of the J/P distinction here.)

I am a bit of a process crafter in that I like learning new techniques, like felting, filet crochet, and lace. I also hate waiting for things, so having a fibercraft project as something to occupy time that would otherwise dribble away is a good idea for me, and that's sort of a process thing, too. But what I really do this for are the FOs, the things coming off the needles. Even if I'm not going to be using them, even if they're gifts for someone else, it's the thing done that pleases me, and the sense of competency of having done it, rather than the quiet joy of each stitch as it slides past.

And I am in the midst of a flurry of FOs. Getting Cobweb off the needles is one of the best things that's ever happened to me - I've gotten a Foliage and an Urchin done, and now I'm finishing up a crocheted tote bag that has been languishing in the corner for the better part of a year.

I also am realizing just how many FOs I actually have. It's not a trivial number. Granted, they're almost all either hats, bags, or shawls, but still.