The right tools for the job
Having the right tools to hand is a gift to our creative selves.
I shared a post on Instagram yesterday which really resonated with a lot of people and so I wanted to share it here and maybe expand on it a little.
“The right tools for the right job.”
This was always a favourite saying of my Dad's and I still have the small set of tools he gave me when I left home to become a student. I was the only girl in my student flat who could not only wire a plug but had a full set of screwdrivers and pliers.
For some reason though I have never really applied this to my knitting until recently.
By way of explanation for this I have to start with the fact that I’ve always hated knitting sleeves (I'm still not mad about them to be honest) which is odd - as they are 90% the same as socks which I love.
The problem of course is that socks are knit on needles made expressly for the purpose. My sleeves were normally knit on a cobbled together combination of whatever needles I could find to deal with the strange stitch count/circumference combo.
Then a friend recommended the Lykke short tipped 3.5mm interchangeable needles - and oh my goodness. How they changed my sleeve knitting experience. Well - hats as well but that’s a different story.
The sleeves of this Love Note sweater need 6mm needles - I don't have 6mm DPNs and my larger circular needles wouldn't have worked - the old me probably would have ended up putting it in time out (for months) and then ordering a small fixed circular at some point down the line.
This time though, when I decided to stop work on the body and instead do the sleeves I just grabbed my Lykke case and the right tips.
Almost like having the proper tools helps get the job done 🤷 Thanks Dad.
Are these needles a bit of an indulgence - yes.
Do they help me to keep knitting and avoid wasting money/time on lots of mismatched circs/DPNs - also yes.
But this got me wondering why so many of the things I use in my life my brain classes as an indulgence, a treat, a luxury rather than something that is needed in order to get the job done. In this case, to actually get a wearable sweater that it is knit and ready in the same season that I bought the yarn - rather than in a few years time when who knows - I might have gone off grey. As unlikely a scenario as that is - I think you get my point.
Better to have the right tools on hand to complete the job, than to prevaricate and put off actually being able to finish the thing.
This goes hand in hand with another of my fairly recent realisations which is to stop saving things ‘for best’. This is really deeply engrained in me from childhood, with the notion of Sunday best. But after throwing away yet another pricy bottle of body lotion that I saved for so long that it went nasty, I have decided that if I buy or am gifted ‘nice things’ I need to actually use them and not squirrel them away for some mythical future best.
It’s a good reminder to myself that I deserve nice things, that I’m worthy of having them and that in some way they make my life easier, more pleasurable or more fulfilling.
So my motto for this week is to use the nice stuff - and to finish those sleeves.
PS: Lykke means Happiness in Norwegian
When I think about buying something expensive, I think about how much it is going to cost per use. The more I use something, the more its cost per use goes down, the more value I'm getting from it, and therefore the more I can excuse the upfront cost.
I bought a similar set for the same reason but cannot get on with them -they’re metal and just don’t ‘feel’ right. Expensive error but I do love my Lykke fixed circulars - brilliant for magic loop, cables a bit of a pain otherwise. Oh for a tool that could interchange cables and needles from different makers