Last post was all about those works in progress where finishing was possible, if not likely. But what about those projects where completion is a thing of wonder, of myth? Oh yes, I’m talking about the Works In Perpetual Progress, aka WIPPs.
These are projects that don’t have a real hard and fast “finished” state – instead, there is just a point where you have more product out of one end than supply on the other, but the supply never truly runs out…
In my case, this takes the form of fiber. Fleeces, to be precise. In the most recent episode of Rearrangement Masquerading As Reorganization and Purging, I decided to take one of my favorite KonMari-isms, and get every bit of spinning fiber in one place. No easy feat, as I have stashed it in all sorts of nooks and crannies, like some sort of frantic, fiber-obsessed squirrel.
The result was well… poofy. But hey, all of these bags (and bags and bags) of fleeces and roving and locks and what have you, they are all mostly air! I surely don’t have that much to get through. *nervous laugh*
A final inventory brings me to 14 bags of processed fleece, ovine and camelid, roughly 30 balls/packs of random fibers from cotton to silk to wool to angora, and some unprocessed fleeces waiting to be washed. After managing to fit them all in an orderly fashion into the daybed’s drawers quite, I was quite smug. That lasted until I found another stash hidden behind a trunk. As the bags were so rude as to not fit in the Designated Drawer, I had to fudge the last bit and stuff things wherever they could be squashed without punctiliousness about such things as categories.
Suffice to say, I have authorized the Crafty Council to slap my wallet out of my hands should I try to purchase any more spinning fiber in the next year. Maybe even the next five, but let’s be honest, I can’t go that long.
So, I have all of this spinning fiber to spin. This is where the Work Perpetual Progress comes in. Sure, I could “buckle down” and decree that I must spin every day until it is down to only one drawer or some other arbitrary milestone. But what does this get me? Guilt. And when Jacquelyn’s Guilt Machine gets going, Jacquelyn’s Joy In The Doing runs away and hides. This, my friends, is how one finds oneself hate-spinning a luxurious cashmere silk blend for a week, and then not touching the spinning wheel for over a year. In a word: counterproductive.
Instead, as a WIPP, this means there is no hard and fast deadline, only management of supply. I know myself well enough to realized that I will not be able to ignore the siren’s call of a deliciously crimped and sproingy Cormo fleece forever – so why set myself up for failure? Instead, it’s a constant work in progress, a hobby where I get to enjoy the journey forever.
That Creative Place 