One morning you wake up and realize… you’ve been knitting like crazy and you haven’t touched your spindle or spinning wheel for the last three or four weeks. You are overwhelmed with guilt, but you have no interest in spinning. If you’re not going to spin, you should get rid of all your spinning equipment, but you don’t want to.
Does this scenario sound familiar? Don’t immediately run out and sell off your collection of spinning tools and fiber! I like to think that most hobbies, especially when we talk about fiber arts, are cyclical.
We circle through them.
For me, I’ll spend 6-12 months focused primarily on spinning, then I’ll have several months when I focus on knitting, then I get into a weaving gig, then I want to turn wood. If I got rid of my weaving equipment every time I took a break, I’d be spending enormous amounts of money, time and effort buying and selling equipment.
If I haven’t touched a tool in one to two years, then I evaluate. I give myself a period of time to use that tool and if I haven’t used it by then, I let it go.
The truth is, mojo comes and goes. You’re not going to be excited about one thing all the time. We call it “obsession” when you are, and not in a funny, cute way. Embrace the ebb and flow of your hobbies. If you are enthralled by knitting and the idea of picking up your spindle kills your buzz, don’t pick up the spindle! That’s a surefire way to build up negative feelings about spinning.
Your spindle will still be there for the moment you find that luscious dyed top that inspires you to pick it back up again.