When does a work-in-progress (WIP) become an unfinished object (UFO)? At what point do we stop thinking of a project as something that will eventually be completed, and start thinking of it as languishing, taking up space, stressing us out slightly with the mere presence of such unfulfilled potential?
After much deliberation, I frogged my Wallis Cardigan from Sweater Girls. It’s a gorgeous sweater, but I started it sometime last year and knit about 20 percent of the left front and put it away, never to be picked up again. I think in this case it was less about the pattern itself that made me cast on, and more about the fact that I have an almost full cone of JaggerSpun Maine Line 2/8 that I picked up from Halcyon Yarns. That’s slightly more than 2000 yards of a heavy lace weight yarn, and it was burning a serious hole in my yarn stash. Now, having accepted the reality that I was very unlikely to ever finish the cardigan I’m staring at the cone again, but this time I have an idea. This morning I read an article on colonialism in British manor houses on the BBC and that makes me want to knit something from Victorian Lace Today which coincidentally is full of beautiful photos of English manor homes. Don’t get me wrong, I also learned a lot about colonialism in the English countryside and finding the best way to represent that history without sugarcoating it, but I also want to knit a grand lace shawl. And I have just the yarn to knit it with!