How I Feel About Shawls

I love to knit shawls.

I don't, however, love to wear shawls.

Very few of the shawls I've knit have actually been worn, I'm sorry to say. Why am I thinking of this now? I've been reading that book everyone else is reading, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and it's somewhat at odds between my desire to create and my burgeoning desire to liquidate my items.

You see, I really want to cast on for a Doodler shawl after seeing so many on Instagram. I have some rad yarns picked out to knit it in!



But when I started thinking of casting on, I realized that I rarely wear any of these colors. I don't even think a shawl with these colors would match any of the coats I own (I actually don't have a plain black or navy coat because I find them boring and hard to pick out from a pile at parties). I have outfits it would go with, to be sure. But since I'd rarely wear it with any of my coats, it's unclear if it would actually make it to my destination for me to wear it.

While I've always realized I am mostly a process knitter, I think this kind of project really brings it home. If I won't wear this shawl that I really want to knit, who will? Also, there must be a shawl that I will actually wear that I can knit instead. What does that shawl look like!?

I thought I was knitting that shawl when I started Lida. I thought I'd wear it at my wedding, but then it was 58 degrees (never thought that would happen in Rhode Island in early March!) and wearing a shawl was not in the cards.



I thought I was knitting that shawl when I was knitting a Stripe Study Shawl. I wear those colors all the time. But the shawl ended up too small to be anything other than a scarf.



The only shawl I consistently wear is a Rhodochrosite I knit from some black cashmere (that I don't even have a completed photo of).

Maybe I should just set up an Etsy shop for shawls I knit but won't wear so that I can continue knitting ridiculous items for fun.

Or maybe I should just shift my focus to color-work yoke sweaters as seems to be happening naturally. Maybe the lesson here is that when I get an itch to knit a shawl I should just wait it out.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I wrote this on Monday and while typing it up today I had to enter all the stash into Ravelry and while I'm still rather focused on color-work yoke sweaters, I'm also now still feeling the Doodler shawl so maybe that Etsy shop is a good idea...