Help, I’ve lost my mojo!

You know we all have mojo – knitting mojo of course! We can go to our bin of yarn, look through it, pick a yarn, and know exactly what we are going to make from it. We start our project and it goes wonderfully, quickly, and ends up marvelous. Those are the projects we just love to do.  For some of us it’s diapering goods (longies, shorties, soakers) and for some it’s personal items we use for ourselves (socks, shawls, sweaters).  We have no problems with them.

But then one day it hits you.  You sit and look at your bin of yarn, staring into it for hours upon hours. What on earth has happened? I’ve lost my mojo!! Where did it go? I recently had that problem. I couldn’t bring myself to knit ANYTHING, even if I tried. I found nothing I liked, no yarn that just screamed knit me. I spent a few good months just wishing I could find my mojo.

I’d cast on numerous projects (most still sitting as WIPs) and couldn’t bring myself to finish them. I have a gorgeous ulmus, about half way done and socks for my mom, one is completed and the other started. I couldn’t bring myself to finish these projects. I wasn’t sure what to do.  At this point I was frustrated with myself, that I couldn’t finish them. So, as sad as it was, I let them just keep sitting and going unknit and gave up trying to find my mojo.

That was until a few days ago. I was speaking to someone very dear to me and they said they wanted some socks. I of course said yes to them, thinking in my head, “Oh lord Lindsay, what have you gotten yourself into?  You have no desire to knit and you’ve promised someone something!” So I came home and found myself back in the spot I least desired to be – sitting in front of my bin of yarn. Dread and fear hit me all at once, and then something amazing happened. I found “IT,” my mojo, deep in the bin of yarn. That one skein of yarn jumped out at me and said, “I AM THE YARN FOR THIS PROJECT!”

I grabbed this yarn and I ran with it, straight to my yarn swift and ball winder and wound it up. I sat down immediately and cast on. Something was there! It wasn’t 100%, but it was there. For a couple of days I piddled with it, knitting here and there. Then one morning I woke up, grabbed my knitting, a nice cup of coffee, and sat down in my comfy chair. I turned on an episode of a TV mini series I’d set to record and I went to town. In that very day, I managed to sit and (in a few slight hours) I finished an entire sock. As I sat and weaved all my ends in, I marveled at my creation. In this creation I’d found my mojo. Today I am finishing the second sock and they will be ready to give to the recipient next weekend when I visit with him.

So in ending this, if you’ve lost your mojo, don’t give up! Its in that bin of yarn somewhere, or in a project that will pop up when you least expect it to! When you find it, keep it near and dear, for you never know when it will disappear again!”

Lindsay can be found on Ravelry as PixieKnits