Excess, limits and creativity

Put a knitter in the largest and best stocked yarn store you can imagine, and the result is one very overwhelmed knitter.  Where do you start?  Which project do you buy yarn for?  Put someone like me in an art supply store, and the result is similar: I could buy pens to draw with!  Watercolors!  Oh, wait, I think I would love to experiment with those intense inks you can paint with.  Which brushes should I get?  There are too many types!

You see it with little kids too: too many toys, too many rides, to many choices for dessert, leads to overexcitement and tears.  

In other words, more supplies does not equal more creativity.  I see this.  I also see something that might offend people, but what the hell, it's MY blog: people with some money tend to buy ALL THE SUPPLIES when starting a new hobby.  While some tools are of course necessary -- having the right size knitting needle is necessary -- new woodworkers do not need a full set of top-of-the-line tools.  New weavers do not need to start on the most expensive loom available.  New spinners don't need to start with top-of-the-line spinning wheels.  What you need to start is good basic stuff.  Not crap.  But a new driver can do well without buying a Rolls Royce.

I am learning in art classes that limiting choices is an important learning and design tool.  Drawing in pencil, nothing more.  Painting with a limited palette.  One teacher, in an old tapestry book, suggests that students should work in nothing more than shades of gray.  Since tapestry weavers tend to be colorphiles, that's a bit shocking but it is brilliant: how better to learn about tone, and shading?

So I am trying to work in that mode.  The ideas I am trying to get down on paper for tapestry designs ARE largely in gray, though with pops or subtle shifts into color.

I am also destashing like crazy.  I gave a friend two large bags of yarn -- skeins left over from old projects, skeins purchased for classes, skeins purchased for projects that never happened.  Excess.  I kept digging in the yarn closet and found expensive yarn purchased for projects that never happened.  I sold that.  I found a sweater's worth of yarn that no longer appealed to me.  Sold that.  I no longer use the older circular needles I used to love -- the technology used in circular needles has improved dramatically, and the new ones are much easier to use.  I donated the old ones to Kim for sale in her Golden Retriever Rescue fundraiser.  I am now trying to destash cloth weaving equipment I am not going to use, now that I am weaving only tapestry.  I have had luck selling a few of the books (I went on major hunting expeditions for certain books that are now difficult to find).  And a major teacher of spinning and weaving lost her studio in a fire recently, and I have volunteered to donate the remaining equipment and books to the fundraising effort to get her studio back up.

More particularly, I do not need to stockpile yarn.  In the past, I bought when I had the opportunity -- when there was a great online sale, or I could buy yarn I could not buy locally.  The internet has changed that.  There is no yarn I cannot buy at almost any time.

The destashing feels great.  I feel no sense of loss, only a sense of relief.  Am I getting rid of all my stashed yarn?  No way.  But I am using it. I have great yarn for the next, oh, 10 items on my Ravelry queue.  Some of it is new, yes.  But that's another reason not to stockpile: taste changes.  

So I am not declaring a yarn diet, since there is no better way to trigger a binge.  I am focusing though on using what I have on hand.

Most of the time.

 

Comments

[missattitude]

Interesting.

As a writer, I don't struggle so much with an excess of equipment as with an excess of ideas. I've learned - the hard way - that there are only so many writing projects a person can work on at a time. However, I go through periods when ideas for projects come flying at me at nearly the speed of light and in numbers that approach (well, not literally, but you know) the number of stars in a galaxy.

Because I'm me, I want to sit down and play with all these new and fascinating ideas right away. Instead, I try to write them down and file them away for later. It's very difficult to do sometimes, but necessary if I'm not to get bogged down in the writer's version of startitis.

[Jessica]

Try *working* in a large, mind-blowingly amazing, well-stocked yarn store, haha. The temptation is never-ending, but so far I have been able to limit myself to a single purchase per month... Sometimes.
For the rest of the year, I'm also planning on destashing down as much as I can- knit all the damn yarn taking up space in my sewing room! Make arm warmers and cozy socks till I'm sick and stock up my Etsy. Everyone gets knitted gifts for the holidays. Take what's left and try to pass it off onto my knitting group, lol.

[Julia - Aberrant Crochet]

Love the insight shared on limiting choices! I find custom orders push my design boundaries too, probably for the same reason - I'm limited to the customer's wants or budget!

[Courtney]

I teach a watercolor class, and one of the running themes is paring down. Working with a limited palette. Weeding out one's travel paint kit. Putting down only the necessary marks. It's funny how that bleeds over into the rest of life, huh?