Commitment

Commitment to Knitting

It is not hard for me to commit to knitting. I am already working on project number 5 for 2025. It is my constant, the thing I do with my morning coffee or when I sit down to watch TV at night. It’s so much fun to see the projects grow. I also work on making orange hats, a commitment I made in 2021 (more about my Orange Hat Project in a later post).

My first project for this year was a thrummed tea cozy. Usually, it’s mittens that are thrummed. Thrumming is a special technique, knitting raw wool (or roving) into the fabric. This allows the mittens to have a warm, fuzzy layer on the inside that shows like little hearts on the outside.

Somehow, when we talked about the tea cozy my friend wanted, the idea of a thrummed tea cozy came up. And there it was, the idea and then I committed to creating it. I had no pattern, only the measurements of the teapot, knowledge of the thrumming technique, a beautiful, rainbow-dyed braid of roving, and a vision in my head. Grey Lettlopi yarn, brought back from Iceland a few years ago, was the perfect background to show off the rainbow colours of the roving.

Commitment was easy when I saw the flaming colours decorating the inside of the growing cozy. Knitting was pure pleasure and seeing it covering the teapot was my reward.

Commitment to Writing

Commitment to writing, that is a different story. I have had to do some writing in my job as a health promotion consultant. Professional writing also involves ongoing and sometimes tedious editing to publish a resource, a briefing note, or a manual. I know therefore how much work goes into writing something.

For the last few years, I have thought about doing some creative writing. At first, it was just an idea, a fantasy. Then it started taking shape. And that’s when it scared me a bit. For a couple of years, I worked on a short novel, and a few vignettes. Then I laid them aside as other things in my life took over. Now, I feel ready to pick the pen up again. And I think that a blog, published and posted regularly, will gently pull me back to writing. At the same time , it will hone my writing skills.

Except …

I need commitment.

Why am I so scared of making that commitment? There are other commitments I have made in the past, commitments I am working on right now. After pondering what commitment means, I realized one important factor. Not every commitment is ‘forever’. In fact, many commitments are time limited. Right now, I have made a commitment to go back to beside nursing, even though I had been away from the bedside for 17 years. It was scary, going back. I had so much to learn. It helped that I set a minimum goal of how many shifts I ‘had to’ work. A perfect example of a time-limited commitment.

So, what will I commit to with this blog? Can I publish once a month? Twice a month? I know I am not ready to commit to publishing weekly. If all goes well, and you, my readers, think it worthwhile, I might do that once I retire from nursing. Today, I don’t have the answer. What do you think? Is once a month too little? Is once a week too much? Right now, I will promise (commit) to post at least once a month for the next 12 months.

Happy reading.