Works in Progress

With the Equinox approaching, it's a good time to take stock of the works in progress, and figure out how well I did with last year's Winter Knitting Goals. This is where I make lots of excuses for why I haven't finished the knitting I'm trying to finish. For quite awhile, I was feeling pretty good about only having two rows of active WIPs on Ravelry (Hibernating projects don't count, right?) but somehow that's changed lately.

The winter plan was that I'd finish two projects for every one I cast on, through the solstice. I kept going fairly well, right up until my birthday, when I cast on the project that messed up the balance. I decided I really needed to make something for my wedding officiant - a Highland bonnet - and that left me with 12 new projects to 23 finished ones. After that I got shameless, casting on sock club socks, socks for the bachelorette party, and a charity knitting project. And then I got married, and moved, and didn't knit much at all. So now it's time to hunker down and get back to finishing projects - especially since I haven't really unpacked the stash yet.

So, what's in progress, and what needs to get out of here?

The eighth Wavy Gravy Hat should be finished soon.

Maybe, just maybe, I can finish the Red Scarf this year. If you've lost track, since this is the third fall I've been knitting on it, this is a project for the Orphan Foundation of America. I'm more than halfway, and they've extended the deadline, so maybe this is the year I'll really finish the scarf!

Once I find buttons, or give up hoping to find buttons, I'll finish and mail the Baby Surprise Jacket.

This is the project that got me in trouble - the Highland Bonnet. (It's also the reason I had to get a new bank card a week before the wedding, and had to worry about scraped knuckles in the wedding pictures, but that's a different story.) All I need to do is add ribbon trim, and it's ready to mail. So once we can dig out the sewing machine, I'll be able to finish it.

The honeymoon socks are at the point that they're my work-in-the-car project, so I'll save them for long trips. However, I'm not sure they'll last through the three-hour ride to Indianapolis, so I'd better find a backup. The Norwegian Socks would be a good candidate for this, if I can find them.

Boo the Bat is one I'd really like to finish in time for Halloween

And I should get the Christmas Garland socks done in time for Christmas.

Then there's the spinning - did I mention the spinning? We went to an SCA-oriented get-together over Labor Day weekend, so I thought I'd bring spinning.


So now I'm committed to turning this into a lacy scarf. It's a Fuzzarelly Fibers blend that I picked up at last spring's Fiber Event, and there's supposed to be just enough to make a nice scarf. Spinning is less portable and less interruptable than knitting, so work on this one might be saved for SCA events and knit nights - once I've finished some of the real knitting projects at knit nights.


So, a plan of attack: finish the Wavy Gravy hat ASAP. Finish the baby jacket, and the bonnet. Then take my time with the honeymoon socks, and work on Boo and the Christmas socks at home.

Except - friends keep having babies, or expecting babies, so it looks like I have a few more baby projects to cast on.

And, we have the time-suckingest WIP of all.

This is our bedroom. At the end of August, we thought we were launching a weekend painting project.

We found out that the paint on the trim was peeling badly, and we'd have to sand it pretty carefully just to paint it again. So refinishing the wood seemed like a good idea. Now we have woodwork coated in SmartStrip, and will peel it off, clean everything up, refinish, and THEN paint. Now that we've figured out what we're doing, the paint removal is going fairly smoothly - most of the cleanup work will be for the parts we did before we knew what we were doing. The walls will eventually get painted in the lighter green color, and we'll probably just leave the yellow-pine color of the wood as it is.

I'm sure we'll be happy when it's over. I'll be happy, because it means we can put together the new bedroom furniture, unpack our clothes, and find my socks! We never had summer here, and it's getting colder every day.