Some things are meant to stay unfinished

How many unfinished knitting projects do you have in your house right now?

Or how many unfinished craft/writing projects?

If you are anything apart from a total minimalist with an iron will (in which case I salute you) I’m guessing you have a few about your person. You may have more than a few.

For the record I can think of at least 15 projects I have currently in various stages of ‘unfinishedness’ and that is without diving into my long term storage baskets (aka the Pit of Doom).

This post isn’t intended to shame anyone - far from it - it is intended to be a reminder, a celebration of our creative lives. For many of us, being creative is part of our every day lives and when we get the urge to start something new or to try out a new idea, we go for it. Life is too short not to.

And it’s certainly too short to be soldiering on with a sweater in a heatwave (ask me how I know 😂)

I have a project in my house that belonged to my husband’s late Grandma. She died in the mid 80s leaving this sweater unfinished in it’s handmade project bag. I think this is the back, still on the old metal needles - curved from years of use, and there is also another piece in the bag along with some yarn.

I shared this photo online and received some lovely suggestions about how we might approach this - sadly there is no pattern and only a tiny amount of unbranded yarn. Beryl was a talented knitter and yarn dyer so there is every chance she was both making up the pattern as she went and dyeing the yarn as well.

But the more I thought about it the more I realised that actually, some projects aren’t meant to be finished.

At the risk of sounding maudlin, very few of us know when our time is up and are able to shuffle off this mortal coil with a sense of completion and all loose ends neatly tied up. Life (and death) isn’t like that.

Some things are meant to be left unfinished.

And that’s fine.