I suspect most makers keep a queue the way some people keep seashells in a bowl by the door.
Not because they intend to do something with each one — but because each shell once caught the light just right.
My own queue does not live in a notebook or a tidy digital list. It lives in a series of glances: patterns I paused over, stitches I admired, ideas that brushed past my sleeve and lingered long enough to be remembered. I think of it less as a line of obligations and more as a parlor where possibilities sit politely, sipping tea, waiting to see who will be invited into the workroom today.
The trouble begins when the queue starts clearing its throat.
When it taps its foot and reminds us that it was here first. That it has been waiting patiently. That it deserves its turn.
Queues, when taken too seriously, have a way of mistaking interest for intention.
But interest is a flutter. Intention is a commitment. And creativity — true creativity — does not respond well to being marched forward by a clipboard.
I have noticed something over the years: the projects that insist most loudly are often the ones I am least ready to make. They belong to a former version of me — a colder season, a busier time, a different patience. Meanwhile, the project that will actually bring joy today often arrives quietly, almost shyly, as if unsure it will be welcomed.
That is the one worth listening to.
I like to imagine my queue not as a line, but as a river. Patterns drift by. Some are familiar faces. Some are curious strangers. A few circle back again and again, waiting for the moment when my hands recognize them as friends.
I do not owe the river completion.
I owe it attention.
If a pattern floats past and I never take it up, that does not mean it was wasted. It meant it had a season, and its season was noticing. Other patterns will arrive that ask for more — time, yarn, mistakes, patience — and when they do, they will not need to shout.
So if your queue has begun to feel less like inspiration and more like supervision, you are allowed to loosen its rules. You are allowed to disappoint your former self. You are allowed to choose today’s curiosity over yesterday’s plans.
After all, making is not a race toward completion.
It is a conversation with the present moment.
And the present moment, I find, is much easier to hear when no one is standing behind you with a stopwatch.
— Evelyn