I love completion.
A few weeks ago, as happens sometimes, I completed three projects within days of each other. One project is a wall piece for my sister, it was in the works for two years. one is a Drop-in (to my annual challenge) shawl that I started in March during the Bay Area Yarn Crawl, and the other is the Wild Thing quilt top I picked up last December, which I talked about in my last post.
It’s no secret among people who make things, that we all have multiple projects in progress at the same time. Someone in my knit & crochet group, Friends of Fiber Art, once asked me how many WIPs (Works in Process) I have at any given time, and there is no definitive answer. I have a sweater I’m currently knitting, and at least two projects tucked away in bags on my shelves that are both on my annual challenge list to finish this year. They were on my challenge last year and the year before.
There are things tucked away I sometimes forget about, as they are out of site. There are things that are, for all intents and purposes, abandoned, even if I haven’t officially abandoned them. What makes it official? I don’t know, I guess when I completely rip it out and rewind the yarn into balls, then it’s officially abandoned.
There are two coiling pieces in Studio B. One I’ve called done, I just want to go back and add a border and a hanging device. The other has been in progress for a long time. I have exhibited it, both in actual and virtual shows. I’m torn between wanting to have it complete and wanting it to become much larger.
The wall piece for my sister was started two years ago after I finished the wall piece for my cousin made from my uncle’s ties. My sister, Sue, asked if I could make her a piece from a shirt she had from when she was 12. Our mother had embroidered it for her, and she has fond memories of wearing it, it’s an adorable design of a quail sitting on a nest. I said yes, and as these things go, it sat for a while, then I worked on it a little, set it aside for a while, then finally finished it.
Part of the reason I love completion is that it relieves the feeling of guilt over not finishing something I said I would do. AND I’m also happy to share that Sue loves her quail wall hanging.
These days I try to knit or crochet monogamously; that is, to work on only one project at a time. Oh who am I kidding, I absolutely have two projects going at the same time. They’re both sitting on the coffee table in my family room right now…
The shawl I finished that same week is from the pattern Simple Bliss. I bought the Japanese (Saredo Watanowa) indigo dyed, cotton yarn for it at Knit House on Main in Tiburon during the Bay Area Yarn Crawl. A day later, I saw a sample of the shawl at A Verb for Keeping Warm in Berkeley.
I was already working on a turquoise cotton sweater that I took with me to the Bay Area. And, as you know… sometimes you’ve just got to
cast on, and I did. It starts out innocently with a shawl like that, you cast on three stitches, just three stitches.
On my last day at my daughter’s house, I tried on the in-progress turquoise cotton sweater. It was supposed to be a cardigan. The fit
of the sweater and weight of the yarn were all wrong together. When I got home, I ripped the whole thing out. I decided to make a pullover similar to Sattley, which I made last year from some yarn that I had bought from the WEBS booth at my very first Stitches West, 12 years ago.
For a few weeks I was literally working on both projects simultaneously, switching back and forth between them, sometimes in the same day. As I got close to the end of the shawl, I pushed it thinking I could finish it by the weekend of my husband’s birthday and Mother’s Day. When my daughter was here for the weekend, she showed me a meme “I can finish this by the weekend…said every knitter ever.” I don’t recall the image, maybe a picture of a cat…
I finished my Simple Bliss, in Japanese Indigo dyed cotton, just as the weather turned hot. It is a perfect summer air conditioning shawl
to go over short sleeves and tank tops.
Since I had just finished and sent off the knit cashmere patchwork items for TES, I still had our dining room set up as Overflow Work Space. When I’m working in the dining room I set a folding table and a card table next to the dining room table, drag all the chairs out of the room, and move my sewing machine to the dining room OWS.
The Wild Thing quilt top needed some extra fabric to make it king size. I needed some stripes of different prints to the outside edges, and I needed to construct a back. I purchased all those fabrics and was also able to pick up a wonderful king size cotton batt from the Quilting for Community thrift store.
On to the next…
