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Friday, October 5, 2012

Will I Ever Finish it? Friday

Will I Ever Finish it? Friday

Carol made a comment to me the other day about not finishing my crochet  projects.  Could this be true? Well, there's the blanket I have been making for Daniel, striped and colorful with an assortment of different stitches, the ziggy pillow I am making for Olivia's dorm room, a tea cup cosy I am making just for fun which still needs its ends sewn it, squares for a charity blanket at church which need to be sewn together and edged, and….

Hmmm, maybe she has a point.  So I decided to start a Will I Ever Finish It? Friday post. Maybe having to dig these unfinished projects up, visit with them for a while as I photograph them and write about them, will get me moving on actually finishing them!

Am I alone in this?  Please tell me about your unfinished work so I can feel I bit encouraged and better.


Here's my first Will I Ever Finish it? Friday post:

Carol came over for a visit the other day.  As seems to be an emerging pattern, our time to sit, visit, drink tea, talk over life  and be creative was cut short. This time a massive traffic jam caused by an accident (very sadly fatal for the truck driver involved) delayed Carol in her trip to my house.  Then I needed to make an emergency art supplies delivery to my daughter at college, and another trip to pick my son up from cross country practice.  But we did manage to squeeze in a very quick cup of tea and a lovely lunch with dear friend Liz and her daughter Anna.

During our short visit we talked about possible baby gifts we could make for some soon-to-be-here babies.  We ventured down into my basement and I  pulled out two baby blankets I have never finished.  One is a pieced log cabin quilt (I'll post a photo of it later).  All the blocks have been made, more or less, but it needs to be assembled, a border added and quilted.  Enough time to finish it before the first baby arrives?  Not sure, not sure.

This is the second blanket:

I started it quite some time ago.  Quite, quite some time ago.  It is from a pattern in an old Leisure Arts leaflet, "Make One For Baby".  I loved the colors and the texture!  Wonderful!


It uses a combination of half double crochet, long double crochet and front post stitches.


 So why, with so much love going on for this blanket, did I stop working on it?  Well, as the blanket grew, row by row, the entire thing started to go askew.  It was very quickly losing its rectangular shape.   If I laid it out on the table with the bottom and one side lined up with the table edges, the opposite side was going off at an unpleasant angle!  My photos don't show this, but thats the beauty of cropping.

I remember, at the time, asking Carol, my crochet expert, to help me figure out what was happening.  She was baffled.  We asked Carol's crochet expert, her mom Muriel, and even Muriel was at a loss to figure out what I was doing wrong.

So, with much frustration and discouragement, the unfinished blanket was assigned to a basket somewhere down in the basement. And there it has lived for the last few years.

Carol and I studied it anew this week.  I had hoped that with a few more years of crochet experience we would have diagnosed its ailment.  No such luck.

So the question now is, do I pick it up again, finish it and hope that the powers of blocking will make it at least presentable?  I assume the baby will not have a ruler handy to assess the squareness of my blanket.

Or do I rip, rip, rip and start it again in hopes of a different result?

Or, as Carol suggested, do I take what I have and make it into something else, like a pillow?


Either way, on this Friday, I have to ask, Will I Ever Finish It?


 While you're here please visit out Baby Love Link Party and add a link to a baby item you have finished or are working on.

Happy Creating!
Cynthia

5 comments:

  1. Please finish it, it's beautiful. I'm sure blocking it will help! Don't worry I have quite a few unfinished projects. i have an african flower blanket. A basket weave king size blanket. A fox hat and an evening clutch bag.

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  2. Thanks for the encouragement and admittal to having a few unfinished projects yourself! So, now I need to ask, what is the fox hat? Do you have a post about it?
    Cynthia

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  3. I vote for finishing the baby blanket. Hopefully blocking will do the trick. And I'm in the same boat with unfinished projects. Although, I'm getting a little bit better at finishing items.

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  4. Thanks Katie! I am starting to feel more encouraged to finish it!

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  5. Hello Cynthia
    Thanks for your kind comments on my latest post and for visiting my blog. Yhank you also for inviting me to display my lollipop dress on your baby themed party. I'll do that just have to go back in and see how to.

    I am now your newest follower and I hope you'll visit my blog again :-)

    I'll echo what others have said here it would be a great shame not to finish such a lovely blanket.


    keep well

    Amanda :-)

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