Better Than Booties, but still a bit lonely
Now that we know that there are over 69,000 UnFinished Knitting Objects
amongst our collective knitting baskets (it used to be 65,000, but I
updated that result with the numbers that came in this weekend!), let's
look at the results of the second survey to see why all those UFOs became UFOs in the first place:
27% of you consider yourself multi-taskers: therefore, you
don't have UFOs, you have parallel works-in-progress. This is not
surprising: Knitters are generous of heart, and I imagine that many of
these simultaneous works-in-progress are gifts for family, charity, and
friends. There's a knitter named Debbie in our office who is constantly
knitting gifts and charity items, and she finishes more projects in a
month than I finish in six months.
I admire that kind of organization and dedication. I have half a
baby sweater for a young man who is no longer a baby (sorry, Shane);
one baby sock for his sister who is also no longer a baby (sorry,
Jackie); and the yarn, still in skeins, for matching hoodies for my two
sisters (sorry, Liz and Carol!). Judging from these projects, plus a
few more: it's not generosity I lack; it's the ability to wade through
acres of stockinette stitch, as that seems to stop me every single
time.
I am not alone in this: 10% of you said your projects often attain UFO status when you hit Stockinette Wasteland.
Conversely, 11% of you said that you were stuck on complex
projects that required more concentration than you can muster in the
midst of your busy lives.
Isn't that interesting? Too much stockinette, and we get stuck; too much intricate stitchery, and we get stuck.
We knitters like to be challenged, but we can't always find the time to
work on the intricate patterns we crave. So it seems like projects
which fall somewhere in the sweet spot between endless stockinette and
intricate stitch charts are the ones least likely to end up as UFOs.
(As a designer, I'm going to keep that firmly in mind!)
There was another major reason for UFOs, one that wasn't terribly surprising: 11% of your UFOs are stuck at the finishing/sewing-up stage.
Stockinette Wasteland
Over and over, I hear how much knitters hate to seam up their knitting. And the series on blocking (Part One and Part Two)
that I ran a couple months ago showed me how little we know about
finishing a garment in general. (Do I see a future topic for Knitting Daily here? Yes, I do.)
As for the remainder of the reasons:
7% of the UFOs are stuck on some tricky technical bit.
3% are the victim of Second Sock (or Second Sleeve!) Syndrome.
7% are ones you no longer really like.
6% are projects where you just don't have any motivation to finish!
19% of you had other answers, but there were hundreds and hundreds
of those, and I haven't finished reading through those yet. I'll share
some of the interesting ones as we go along.
The Return Of The Bonsai!
Since
I brought up the Blocking Tutorial, I am going to have to 'fess up to
What Happened To The Bonsai Tunic. (Later: I will also be addressing
the Bust Dart Tutorial, which turned out to be a much gnarlier project
than I ever imagined. Le Bust Darts are off to be reviewed by a tech
editor who will try to smooth out the rough edges. But There Will Be A
Bust Dart Tutorial, really there will. It just turned out to be an
entire chapter instead of a paragraph or two, so it needs a bit more
time in the editing department.)
As for the Bonsai Tunic:
I love the yarn, I love the pattern. I knit it, and blocked it, and
seamed it partway...and put it on, only to discover that something had
gone Horribly Wrong. It looked huge on me, even though I had done the
math and everything. I took it off and upon closer examination,
realized that I had not ever switched to the smaller needles for the
waist and front sections. I had knit the whole dratted thing on the
larger needles.
No wonder it was too big.
I decided that the Bonsai needed to marinate in my UFO bin for a
bit. I needed some distance; we needed a time out from one another to
discover our own individual needs and desires. Would I rip it out to
the waist and have a little do-over? Would I find a larger friend to
give it to? Would I just hide it away and pretend the whole thing had
never happened? I admit to attempting this last option for a while, but
it's a bit difficult to hide a knitting project when you have blogged
about it to thousands of Knitting Daily readers, readers who pay attention and notice if such things suddenly go AWOL.
So, in honor of all the 69,000 UFOs we share, on Wednesday and Friday I will talk about Saving The Bonsai.
Sandi Wiseheart is the editor of Knitting Daily.
What's on Sandi's needles? Never mind the needles: What's on
Sandi's FEET? Her nice warm newly finished pair of sockies, inside her
new boots. We had our first snow this weekend, so suddenly finishing my
sockly UFOs seems quite a bit more urgent that it did a few weeks back.