Have you got knitting on the brain? (Picture: Getty)

The late nights, the aching joints, the frustration.

It’s a wonder any of us knit at all.

Knitting can be the ultimate stress relief.

It’s a hobby, almost a meditation, that can calm us down, focus our minds and chill us out.


It can also be a giant pain in the arse.

You spend your weekends counting dropped stitches and have found yourself furiously knitting just one last sock late on Christmas Eve for the past four years.

If the UFOs (unfinished objects) under your bed are your biggest guilty secret, here are 21 struggles you’ll have faced.



1. You start a new pattern and it asks you to knit a gauge swatch

You laugh in the face of such hold ups, and your hats and jumpers always turn out too big or too small.

2. Which inevitably means you run out of wool before the end of the project

And have to decide if it’s worth going out to spend a tenner on a new skein when there’s only six rows left.

Or think ‘sod it’ and just cast off.

No-one will notice the pattern doesn’t fully repeat, right?

3. One more row is always a lie anyway

It’s definitely finished, if you just stretch it here, and casting off will add a bit of length.

Basically finished (Picture: Getty)

4. But at least you’ve finished it

The number of UFOs and WIPs (works in progress) that are littering your house is embarrassing.

When you eventually get back to them you can’t remember where you were in the pattern in any case.

Should have pinned a note to the project when you got bored of it.

5. This is why there is always a UFO on the needles you want to use

And why you can’t play with the beautiful new yarn you just bought because that cardigan you started to make after your last payday splurge is still only half done.

Guess you’ll just have to go out and buy new needles.

6. You do understand that your yarn addiction has become problematic

Your stash is the reason you eat beans on toast at the end of every month and why you have to factor in a yarn budget every time you travel.

Visiting different yarn shops and hand spinners is half the reason you wanted to go to on holiday anyway.

You searched for them before you even booked a hotel.

7. And your stash has started to take over your house as a result

When you start throwing clothes out to make room in another draw, you know you should probably readdress your priorities. But you won’t.

8. Cats and children are the enemy

Let kids and kittens anywhere near your knitting bag and that hand-died silk that you had such plans for will be sequestered.



I mean, at least they look like they’re having fun with it.

Lol (Picture: Getty)

9. But yarn has a life of its own anyway

If your ball hasn’t made a bid for freedom and rolled off the sofa, under the table and through the kitchen then it has probably been making friends with the other skeins in your cupboard.

Knotty, twisted, impossible to separate friends.

10. Which is why everything needs to be in arms reach

If you need to be getting up and down for tea, scissors, pattern markers and a different-sized cable needle you cannot hope to keep hold of your runaway wool.

This is especially true if you are knitting with a cat on your lap.

11. Tinking back when you notice a mistake on your row is easy enough

But frogging an hour’s work because you didn’t notice a catastrophic error is heart-breaking.

If it’s just a slipped stitch it can be tempting to ignore it.

Although ripping through 20 lines can be incredibly satisfying.

12. Because, really, counting is hard

…23, 24, 25, ‘what? Yes, a cuppa would be lovely.’

1, 2, 3, ‘sorry? No, just milk.’

1, 2, 3, ‘talk to me again and I will be forced to tear out your tongue and feed it to the dog.’

13. Even counting your needles can be challenging

For some reason you have three 9mm needles and only one 3mm and you do actually have two 5mm but one is metal and the other is bamboo.

Your cable needle is lost inside your yarn ball somewhere and you have been making do with a crayon for the last few weeks too.

If only it was this simple (Picture: Getty)

14. You have been known to be up at three in the morning browsing patterns online


You don’t even lace knit, but that shawl is so pretty.

And you’d love to give those colourwork mittens a go, but you would never wear them.

You must know someone who’d like them?

15. You really do have too many scarves

So you’ve moved on to hats, but you only have one head.

But that pattern is so cool.

And it would look amazing in that incredible merino yarn you bought on a whim the other day.

A shawl isn’t the same as a scarf, and you only have three of them. Maybe you need another shawl.

Hm. Or a knitted beard? (Picture: Getty)

16. But at Christmas you end up in the same blind panic in the middle of December that you do every year

Why did you think knitting matching socks for everyone in the family was a good idea?

And how dare your sister’s baby be born two weeks premature?

You aren’t finished with the blanket and matching bonnet.

17. Which is why you are always knitting on public transport

That hour commute is key to catching up with your latest project.

You’ve stopped caring that your elbows are in your neighbour’s newspaper.

18. It’s also why there are holes in all of your handbags

Because needles.

19. But no matter how much of a mess you find yourself in every December, you just can’t knit properly in summer

It’s too hot in August to be sitting draped in a woolen jumper.

So much gossip. So few rows. (Picture: Getty)

20. And your Stitch ‘n’ Bitch group is no help


You’re far too busy talking and drinking wine to get any real work done.

Counting stitches would interfere with the gossip about what blue yarn’s boyfriend has done and how cream socks’ boss treated her today and why charcoal snood is annoyed at her mother-in-law

21. So come January you are suffering from some form of repetitive strain injury and your pinky hates you

Try out some of these exercises, recommended by Andrea Sanchez, to ease the strain.

Because you know you can’t just stop, because you completely love it.

MORE: 11 crafty Christmas presents you need to start now

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