4KCBWDAY1 - The House Cup

I'm a bit like Harry Potter today. As part of KCBW, I have to choose my house for the week and I am kind of stuck between two different houses - Bee and Monkey.

The House of Bee: Bees are busy and industrious, but can flit from one interesting project to the next as bright and shiny things capture their interest.

The variation in the projects I start reflect this quite well.  Like a lot of knitters, I often find myself 'researching' for the next project while I finish off whatever it is I'm knitting (don't kid yourself, I know you do).

I also get very distracted by bright and shiny new yarn.  I can spend hours looking at the full range of available yarn online.  I have a particular affection for hand dyed British yarn - dyers like Vikki at Eden Cottage and Lyndsey at Countess Ablaze.

At my best, my tendency to try new projects and yarns fuels my need to learn and develop my knitting (more on that later) and at worst, it distracts me from my knitting goals.

The House of Monkey: Intelligent and with a fun loving side, Monkeys like to be challenged with every project presenting them with something new and interesting.

I like to think that I'm intelligent, although I'll leave that to better people than I to determine.

I love the humour of our crafts - anyone that can spend weeks, months and even years knitting or crocheting a project to find that you didn't get gauge or spends 20 minutes counting stitches to be distracted by their partner shouting out random numbers has to have a sense of humour to stay out of prison. Mentioning no names obviously.

I think that the stage of my knitting career (I've been knitting non-stop for two years) means that my choice of projects always seems to give me something new to try.

That's not to say that I don't search out challenging projects: anyone who followed the Umaro saga knows that I like a challenge.  Just today I learnt a new increase - the k1-r/b.  I love it; it's so neat and tidy.

I also seek out challenges to inform my own design process; it's a bit like writing, it's almost impossible if you don't read.  When designing, I find that my knitting knowledge isn't quite at that stage where I'll automatically know how to do something so off I go, searching for the answers in the vastness of the land of Google.

For me the pursuit of knowledge is important, it keeps my love of knitting fresh.  It stops my projects from going stale and allows me to have the occasional 'easy' project on the go.

So like Harry, I'm going to persuade the sorting hat to put me in the (vaguely) more noble house.  I am in House Monkey.  Go Monkeys!!