Weave It In Wednesday

I’ve never experienced more uses for the “finish” like I have as a crafter.

Example 1.
Me: It’s finished!!!
Him: Are you going to wear it?
Me: well, it’s not finished yet. See those ends hanging out? I still have to weave in all of the ends.

Example 2.
Me: It’s finished!!!
Him: Even the ends?
Me: Yup!
Him:Can you wear it?
Me: Nope, still need to block it. See how messy it looks. It will look way nicer once I wash it.

Example 3.
Me: It’s finished!
Him: Washed?
Me: Yes, I can wear it! Let’s go take pictures. Then I can post it on ravelry and the blog.

These conversations happen so often in my house that we have created new terms to use instead of over used and generic “finished.”

LK finished – a term used whenever a project is mostly done. Ie, the knitting is complete. (named for me)

BK finished – when a project can be worn and requires zero additional work. Ie, the ends are woven in, the piece is blocked, photographed and in the closet. (named for him)

If I tell my husband his socks are finished before I’ll allow him to wear it, he just laughs at me. “They aren’t finished until I’m able to wear them.” It’s a fair point, but we often consider a project to be complete once we cast it off. It’s like when a contractor is all finished, but they still have to do touch ups, cover the outlets, clean up the mess and other projects that take another week. We feel like we are finished and the little stuff just is time consuming at the end, but not the main masterpiece.

Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where we actually finish something when we feel like the work is complete? Cast off that sweater and throw it on, walk outside and let the world praise you with the beautiful new garment. Cause ya know, people will be just waiting outside for us ready to shower us in compliments.

Back to the point. A couple of years ago, I started doing a Weave It In Wednesday. The point was to take any WIPs and weave it any ends that are already on the project. The reasoning being that when you cast off the project, you would only have that last end to weave in (or maybe a little more depending on the project). At least you wouldnt be weaving in all of the ends. I found that it made it way easier to just weave in the last ends and be that much closer to being done with the project when I felt done with it. I mean, if the contractors just did touch ups along the way, would there still be that many at the end?

When I first started, I had a lot of ends to catch up on. I found that as I kept up with the weekly tradition, there were less ends each week and I was still able to get some fun knitting in that night as well.

So, why Wednesday? Well, no one deserves a night of end weaving on a Monday. Tuesday is a good time to get done whatever also wasn’t happening on Monday (surviving Monday is enough). By Thursday or Friday, you definitely deserve to work on whatever you want. So Wednesday was a good compromise of being far away from Monday, but not quite into the slowdown fun part of the weekend.

Also alliteration.

I’ve fallen off this bandwagon since starting my hand dyeing business and essentially occupying most of my free time with work. However, I’ve gotten into a good groove and have been more productive on the crafting front. This means more ends are hanging around waiting to torture me between the LK finished and BK finished timeframe.

So, next Wednesday, what are your plans?