Blanket Done!!

It's finished! I cast off last night and finished seaming it together and weaving in all the ends today. Hooray! I have less than half a ball left, so it will probably hang out in my stash with my scraps until I can figure out what to do with it. Now all I have to do is finish off the Mt Tam Mitts, and I can start something new. Hmm... what to do next. :o)

Where Do UFOs Come From?

It's a problem most if not all knitters encounter at least once (or 100 times) in their knitting lives. It's the Cast on that becomes a WIP that gets pushed to the back burner that eventually becomes a UFO, never to be touched again. How does this happen? In some cases, it is because the knitter loves casting on and has ADD (the ADD part, much like me) and then they find another project to cast on, and it continues; many beginnings but no ends. Some people are actually organized enough with their multiple projects to have one for every occasion; the WIP for watching TV, the WIP for taking on the bus/train/out, the WIP for when you're angry, the WIP because you're bored with all the other WIPs. Those organized people probably have very few UFOs.
And then there are the projects from when we first learned how to knit. The 14 inch wide garter stitch scarf made of Red Heart (or some equivalent), every row a different tension, and it goes on for about 6 feet. These are UFOs that will most likely never be touched again, and for some people they are probably so buried in their stash (and other UFOs) that they don't even realize they are there. I have had at least one of those. I decided to make a cute little bolero, but the yarn was so painful to knit with, I gave up, stuffed it in the back of the bottm drawers and didn't touch it for over a year before ripping everything off the needles and throwing the whole thing away. (This is how I can claim I have no UFOs; they're trashed before anyone can account for them) I have either donated or thrown away yarn that I no longer have a desire to knit with, so the bolero problem, adn any others like it, has been pretty much solved.
So how can such a monogamous knitter begin to see a UFO waiting to happen? Take 18 balls of a bulky yarn, add in a cable pattern and the "Imma make a big blanket!!" attitute, stir and let settle for.... 2.5 months until 3.5 balls remain. I don't know what it is. I think the pattern is very nice; it has helped me look at cables and get good tension on them, and to be able to recognize where in the pattern I am and how many rows since the last cable I have knit. The yarn is nice and warm, and even in my apartment, it is still pretty cool, so it is not suffocating to knit. But I am so anxious to get this darned thing finished! My ADD is kicking in full gear and it is taking every amount of will power I have in me to not throw my hands up over my head, walk away and say "I give up!" I mean, really.. I have less than 4 balls left. How hard can it be to suck it up and chug out the last little bit? And as compared to socks when I knit for a solid hour on the blanket, I can see a few inches progress instead of only a few centimeters. Each time I pick it up, I think about the Fingerless mitts which are my knit night projects, since.. I mean really. Who wants to lug around 15 balls of bulky yarn every Thursday evening? And I think.. I need to get back to that gusset that I was working on. I am going to pull it all the way back from the start so I can use this other method of M1 so I don't get those nice little holes. And now it makes sense to me, and oh! This is going to be so fast once I finish this darned blanket! At which point I look at the blanket and *almost* consider binding off short and proclaiming "Look! I'm done! Isn't it great?!" Which would leave me with another problem; what to do with the remaining balls that were not used in the blanket.
This is how UFOs are born. If I were incapable of such restraint, I'd have cast on a lace shawl or that sweater I've been meaning to make, and the blanket would be shoved in a corner or left to the cats to sit on (like they don't do that already). So I force myself to finish, knowing that I'll be so happy when I do complete it. I'll throw myself a little party. I've got the wine ready. Here's to preventing UFOs.

Knit Therapy

It has been a very long week for this Kiwi bird. Work has been pretty rough lately due to important deadlines that are fast approaching and snuck up very quickly. This has only been impeding my knitting slightly. The blanket is coming along quite well, and with the progress I am making I think I should be finished in 2 weeks at the most. This will make me excedingly proud to bust about 18 balls of yarn out of my stash (and at the same time make room for more to find a home in my drawers). It will also be nice to have such a large and lovely item that I knit that can be displayed on my couch and cuddled under. Every day I look at the cable pattern and think how perfect it was for this yarn. I'll post more pictures when work is not completely exhausting me and I can gather enough energey to spread out the two sections and take a picture. Or when I'm not feeling as lazy as I do now.
Tonight was also knit night. I think I brough the blanket to one or two knit nights when it was still under 5 balls of yarn; anything more and it would be rediculous to attempt to carry around. Instead, I have been bringing a pair of Fingerless Mitts (*much* more portable) to work on while not at home. They are Mt Tam Fingerless Mitts by Lady Cashmere that have a lovely cable pattern in them. Even though i have been working on them very infrequently, each time I do I make a heck of a lot of progress in a very short amount of time. Unless of course we are talking about tonight. I was working on the thumb gusset and forgot to continue with my cable pattern. I think I am ending up tinking back 9 rounds, but of all nights, tonight I really didn't mind. Tonight was really a night of knitting therapy whether I was kniting or tinking. It was really nice just to feel the soft soft fluffy yarn in my hands, and it did help to destress from the week and enjoy creating (and then fixing). And now that I know what I am doing with this pattern, it is going to fly once I get going again. Maybe tomorrow.
Speaking of knit night, who remembers the Boise shawl I was so proud of? And the knit along? I have been doing my duty to reming the other ladies that for me once I finished, the knit along promptly turned into a knit alone since everyone has since put their shawls down. I'll be happy if even *one* other knit nighter finishes. And I'll stop harrassing everyone ;o) And don't blame my monogamous knitting... it was because of the surgery and my inability to get out of bed for almost a week. In either case....
Happy knitting.