I Knit What I Want to Knit Again — And That’s Exactly the Point

There’s a particular feeling that happens somewhere around the third repeat of a lace pattern, or maybe during the second sleeve of a sweater you’ve been working on for three weeks. It creeps in quietly, settles somewhere between your shoulder blades, and whispers: I would start this all over again right now if I could. That feeling — that specific, warm, almost reckless enthusiasm — is what guides every project I cast on. I knit what I want to knit again. And after years of chasing trends, following along with knit-alongs I didn’t really care about, and finishing objects I never wore, that philosophy has changed everything.

This post is about what it actually means to knit with intention, why the “I’d repeat it” test is the most reliable filter I’ve found for choosing projects, and how that mindset has reshaped my stash, my queue, and my relationship with the craft itself.

The Knit-Along Problem (Or: Why I Stopped Following the Crowd)

For a long time, I made my project decisions based on what was happening in the knitting community around me. A new pattern dropped from a popular designer and suddenly everyone was knitting it, posting their progress, sharing their color choices. The FOMO was real and immediate. So I’d buy the pattern, dig through my stash for something close enough, and cast on — often before I’d even looked at the full pattern, certainly before I’d asked myself whether I actually wanted to own the finished object.

The results were predictable. I finished things I didn’t love. I frogged projects halfway through because I had no emotional investment in them. I ended up with a queue full of patterns I’d never touch and a growing pile of finished objects that sat unworn in a drawer.

The knitting internet is wonderful — genuinely, I mean that. It’s a community of extraordinary creativity, generosity, and skill. But it’s also a powerful engine for generating desire on someone else’s terms. When you scroll through beautifully photographed finished objects every day, it’s easy to confuse “I want to knit that because it looks beautiful in that photo” with “I want to knit that because I want to wear it, use it, or give it to someone I love.”

Those two things are not the same.

What “I’d Knit It Again” Actually Means

The test I use now is simple, almost embarrassingly so. When I finish a project — or sometimes even while I’m deep in the middle of one — I ask myself: Would I cast this on again?

Not “was it technically impressive?” Not “did people like it on Instagram?” Not even “did the recipient appreciate it?” Just: would I, with full knowledge of every hour this took and every moment of frustration and every beautiful section I sailed through, choose to make this again?

When the answer is yes, that’s signal. That means something real happened between me and this project. The pattern was satisfying to work. The yarn felt good in my hands for the weeks or months I held it. The process itself gave me something — calm, focus, flow, joy — beyond just the finished object at the end.

When the answer is no, that’s signal too. And it’s worth sitting with, because the “no” is almost always instructive. Was the pattern poorly written? Was the yarn unpleasant to work with — splitty, scratchy, too slippery? Was the construction method one that doesn’t suit the way I knit? Did I choose a size or silhouette that I knew, if I’m being honest, wasn’t right for me?

The repeat test is really a way of forcing honesty. It bypasses all the rationalizations — “I spent good money on that yarn,” “it took me four months,” “people said it was impressive” — and asks the one question that cuts through: do you actually love this?

How This Changed the Way I Choose Patterns

Once I started filtering my project choices through this lens, my whole approach shifted.

I stopped worrying about whether a pattern was trending. Trends are fine — sometimes the thing everyone is knitting really is extraordinary, and I’ll fall in love with it on its own merits. But the fact that a pattern is everywhere right now tells me nothing about whether I will want to repeat it in my own knitting life. So it stopped being a primary factor.

I started paying more attention to construction. There are certain ways of building a garment that I genuinely enjoy — top-down construction where I can try things on as I go, seamless yokes that let me feel the shape developing in my hands, short rows that create beautiful movement in a fabric. And there are methods that make me feel like I’m fighting the project the whole way through. I know this about myself now. I stopped pretending otherwise.

I got much more honest about yarn. This one was harder, because yarn is beautiful and buying it is one of life’s small pleasures, and it can be very easy to convince yourself that a yarn you love in the skein will be wonderful to knit with. Sometimes that’s true. But yarn that pills immediately, or splits on every stitch, or has a halo so thick you can’t see your work — that yarn will make me miserable for the weeks I’m working with it, no matter how gorgeous it looked in the shop. Life is too short to knit with yarn I don’t enjoy.

I started keeping a short list of my “repeat projects” — the patterns I’ve made before and would happily make again, either in a new colorway, a different size, or for a different person. This list has become a kind of personal canon. It tells me more about my actual taste in knitting than any queue I’ve ever curated.

The Joy of the Second Make

There’s something that doesn’t get talked about enough in knitting spaces: the second make. The repeat. The intentional choice to return to a pattern you already know and love.

Our culture, knitting culture included, is obsessed with novelty. New patterns, new techniques, new yarn. There’s always something new to try, something else to learn, another frontier to push toward. And that energy is genuinely wonderful — it’s part of what makes knitting such a rich and endlessly interesting craft. But novelty has a shadow side, which is the subtle implication that returning to something familiar is somehow lesser. That knitting the same pattern twice means you’re not growing, not exploring, not doing it right.

I reject this entirely.

When I knit a pattern for the second time, I knit it better. I understand the construction from the inside out. I know exactly where the tricky bits are and I’m not caught off guard by them. I can make better choices — better yarn weight, better color, better size adjustments — because I have real knowledge of how this pattern behaves. The process is smoother and more satisfying. The finished object is often the best version I’ve ever made of that project.

There’s also something deeply meditative about a pattern you know well. When I don’t have to puzzle out instructions or count obsessively or stop to re-read a section, I can knit in a different kind of state — more present, more relaxed, more fully in the rhythm of the work. Some of my most peaceful knitting hours have been spent on second and third versions of beloved patterns.

The repeat isn’t a retreat from growth. It’s a different kind of mastery.

Building a Stash That Means Something

This philosophy has fundamentally changed how I think about yarn purchasing, and in particular about my stash.

For years, my stash was a collection of good intentions and impulse buys. I had yarn I’d purchased because it was beautiful, yarn I’d bought because it was on sale, yarn I’d picked up at festivals because the atmosphere made everything look exciting, yarn I’d received as gifts that wasn’t quite my color palette. Some of it I loved. A lot of it I felt vaguely guilty about.

When I started filtering my project choices by the repeat test, I started filtering my yarn purchases the same way. Before I buy a yarn, I try to ask: if I knit with this and loved it, would I buy it again? Not just: is it pretty. Not: is it a good deal. But: is this a yarn I could imagine wanting more of?

This doesn’t mean I only buy expensive yarn or that I’ve become precious about it. It means I’m trying to be honest about the difference between a yarn I admire and a yarn I want to spend weeks of my life holding in my hands.

My stash is smaller now. It’s more coherent. When I open the bins, I mostly feel happy rather than overwhelmed. The yarn in there is yarn I genuinely want to knit, in colors I actually wear, in weights and fiber contents that suit the projects I actually make. It’s not perfect — there are still some legacy purchases I haven’t quite figured out what to do with — but the direction is right.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Let me be concrete about what this actually looks like day to day, because “knit with intention” can sound abstract in a way that makes it hard to act on.

When I’m browsing patterns, I try to notice the difference between excitement and longing. Excitement is surface-level — “oh that’s pretty,” “ooh that’s interesting,” “I’ve never seen that construction before.” Longing is deeper — “I want to wear that,” “I want someone I love to have that,” “I want to spend my evenings working on that.” I try to chase longing and let excitement pass through me without necessarily reaching for my wallet.

When I cast on, I try to choose a yarn I already know I like working with, not one I’m hoping will be good. Hope is not a yarn strategy.

When I’m in the middle of a project and feeling the slog, I ask myself whether the slog is just the natural tiredness that comes at the middle of any long project, or whether it’s telling me something real about the project itself. Sometimes the middle is just the middle — every knitter knows that feeling — and you push through to the other side and find the joy again. Sometimes the slog is a symptom of a deeper mismatch between you and the project, and no amount of pushing through will make you love the thing.

When I finish something, I do the repeat test. I write it down. Over time, those notes have become the most useful record I have of my own taste.

The Sweater I’ve Made Three Times

I want to tell you about one specific project, because it illustrates all of this better than any abstract principle can.

There’s a sweater pattern I’ve made three times now. It’s not famous — it’s not one of the viral patterns that appears in every knitter’s feed. It’s a relatively simple top-down round yoke with some beautiful textured panels on the body and a slightly oversized, deeply cozy silhouette. The first time I made it, I used a heathered gray worsted weight I’d been hoarding for years. I wore it constantly that winter. I thought about it all summer.

The second time, I made it in a burnt orange for a friend who I knew would love it, and watching her wear it was one of the small pure joys of my crafting life.

The third time, I made it for myself again, in a deep forest green, with some modifications I’d been thinking about since the first version — a slightly longer hem, a little more ease in the body, a different ribbing at the cuffs.

Every time I’ve cast on this pattern, I’ve known exactly why I was doing it. I could predict the pleasure of the yoke construction, the satisfying density of the texture panels, the moment I’d try it on and feel it was right. The process delivered what I knew it would deliver, and the finished object was something I actually wanted.

That’s the whole thing, really. That’s everything I’m trying to say.

Knitting as a Practice of Knowing Yourself

Here’s what I’ve come to believe, after a lot of years of knitting and a lot of finished objects and quite a few frogs: knitting is a practice of self-knowledge.

Every project is a small experiment in knowing what you like, what brings you peace, what holds your attention, what kind of beauty matters to you. Over time, if you’re paying attention, the pattern becomes clear. You discover that you’re a process knitter or a project knitter. You discover that you love fine lace or that fine lace makes you miserable. You discover the colorways that make your heart lift every time you pick up the needles, and the ones that seemed beautiful in the skein but feel wrong on the work.

The “I’d repeat it” test is just a way of taking that self-knowledge seriously. Of saying: I have evidence now about what works for me and what doesn’t. I’m going to use it.

This doesn’t make me a less adventurous knitter. I still try new techniques, new construction methods, new-to-me designers. But I bring my accumulated self-knowledge to those adventures, and I use it to make choices I’ll be glad of.

An Invitation

If any of this resonates — if you’ve ever finished a project and felt curiously empty about it, or found yourself in the middle of a knit-along wondering why you signed up, or opened your stash and felt more guilt than joy — I’d gently suggest trying the repeat test on your current queue.

Go through it. For each pattern saved there, ask honestly: would I actually want to repeat this experience? Would I want to own or give away this finished object enough to spend real hours of my life on it?

You don’t have to delete everything that gets a “no.” But notice what the exercise reveals. Notice where your genuine enthusiasm lives, versus where you’re knitting to trend or to obligation or to some imaginary version of yourself that wears things you would never actually wear.

Then cast on the thing you actually want to make. The thing you’d make again.

That’s where the good knitting lives.