Now there’s nothing better than a good finished object - especially when it coincides with Finished Object Friday. But it struck me today as I was taking a photo that there’s more to finishing a piece of knitting and putting it away/wearing it.

For me there is a distinct ritual involved in finishing a project - almost closing the circle if you will. A process that started with an idea in your head, went through the planning and the preparation stages into the actual knitting of it, and finishing with the cast off.

Now of course the actual knitting of it can take a variable length of time and sometimes there are some false starts/swearing/ripping back to do. Sometimes you give up in frustration and file it under ‘nope - move on’. But at some point every project reaches the closing out process.

The part where you reclaim the needles, tidy away the bits that have accumulated in the bottom of the project bag - ah, that’s where your favourite marker pen ended up! - and squirrel away any leftovers into whatever system you have for dealing with these things.

For me it’s like saying goodbye to that phase of the project, before hopefully it moves on to becoming a fully functional and much loved item of apparel or home wear. If not in my house then with someone else. Sometimes I’m more glad to see the back of a project than others. But I always like to do my little finishing ritual before I do final photos and post it on socials.

This hat was an absolute joy to knit by the way. I am absolutely not a hat person normally, but this is wonderfully stretchy and slouchy. It fits me well, I love the colour (yarn is Eden Cottage yarns - need I say more) and it was a perfect downtime project for while I was away between Christmas and New Year. And even better there was only a small amount of yarn leftover.

The perfect project in every way. So much so that I’m having to fight the urge to cast on another one. But I have Things To Do and Designs To Knit, so it will just have to wait for another day.

Or I might just cast on a tiny baby one - you know - just to scratch the itch.

If I’ve tempted you, there’s a free adult sized pattern on Kelly’s blog here, or a paid version on Ravelry with all sizes ranging from tiny baby to huge adult.