I LOVE knitting.  I wouldn’t say that I’m at an intermediate level, but I’m not bad.  I especially love discovering new patterns, finding the yarn and then jumping in.  But I have a problem:  I never finish anything!  I get excited about a project, work on it for a few weeks, then my attention wanes and I’m either onto a new one or that’s that.

My G.P. – a wonderful woman and an avid embroiderer – shrugged off my concern with 4 little words:  “we call those WIPs”, she said.  Then she explained:  works in progress or UFOs:  unfinished objects.  “I do Japanese embroidery,” she continued.  “When I work on a project, it’s not a questions of weeks or months, but years.”

“Wow,” I said, “that’s takes dedication and patience.”

So, I’ve started lots of scarves… I shouldn’t feel so bad, right?  And really the problem is that I’m a very slow knitter, because I have arthritis and my hands just don’t move very quickly.  Then again, if I had just stuck to 1 scarf instead of starting 4, I would at least have had a finished one to show for all my hard work.  Sigh…

Well, I have a new challenge:  I have begun a scarf for my boyfriend, and if I don’t finish it, he will never let me hear the end of it.  There is nothing like the fear of eternal mocking to provide incentive 🙂

After slacking off for most of the summer, I have – oh say – another month… month and a half before it gets cold enough for him to need it.  And I may have bitten off more than I can chew, because I’ve sort of promised to knit him the matching hat as well.  I’ve never knit a hat before, so we shall see how that goes.

Above is a picture of my WIP from earlier in the year.  I’m quite a bit farther along now, more than half way through.  I’ll post an updated pic soon.

This is the pattern I’ve chosen:  http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/christians-scarf