Stories From Friends: Anchor Projects

 

You know what i mean right…I'm talking about those projects that you’ve had on the needles since you decided to walk through the yarn bombed door into the addiction we all know and love.

Let’s set the scene…your gaze meets a garment so unimaginably unique and beautiful that you need to know how to get your hands on one. To your amazement (and slight frustration) you find out that the garment you’ve just fallen hopelessly in love with is *cue dramatic music* HAND.MADE.

You puzzle over this dilemma for 16 to 22 minutes until that proverbial light bulb chimes and your mind has been made up.  You will learn how to make your one true love and only that one true love and then you will move on with your life. HA!

Then, there’s a second true love and a third…and before you know it you’ve spent your bi-weekly savings (and then some) on knitting supplies and are using words like “HO” and “long tail cast on” in your everyday conversations. Fast forward 7 months as you wake up one day and roll over in bed to find that stitch markers have taken up the majority of the real estate next to your alarm clock and yarn scraps are inconspicuously adorning your poor husbands favorite hoodie. 

You then come to the realization that your “one true love” is sitting half finished in your first ever project bag (that you had to have -- those colors…that interfacing…I mean, come on) and has established residency at the bottom of a basket filled with yarn and miscellaneous notions collecting dust and potentially moths. But somehow all of that is okay, because without that project you would never have found all 59 other projects that have come together in perfect harmony to create the maker you are staring at in the mirror right now.

Congratulations, you are now a genuine fiber artist and have 1-3 established “anchor projects” keeping you grounded in the craft and reminding you with every cast on and bind off that you might never wear that first true love, but also that you might be okay with it.  

About the storyteller:

Chelsea Zachorewitz is a third generation legacy knitter apprenticing under her most talented mother, who’s been knitting for over 20 years at this point. Her apprenticeship started around a year ago when she had way too much time on my hands and an excess of creative energy pooled up inside of her.  She started with a pair of vanilla socks using Patons Kroy self-striping sock yarn and 2 [size 2] circular needles.  She finished that pair of socks [made for her lovely fiancé] in about 4 weeks-  and she was hooked. You can find more of her writing at legacyknitz.com