Carnival of WIPs

What is a WIP? It is a "Work in progress". I have some few works in progress, things that I am working on slowly and have not yet finished. Some folks call these partially finished projects UFOs, for UnFinishedObject, but I am not geeky enough for that. My unfinished business is referred to as WIPs...because it's my job to "whip" them into shape.

The most vintage WIP in my craft room is the dreaded green sweater. This sweater dates from the era of Y2K fears and dial-up internet. It currently lives in a wicker basket and optimistically waits for me to get back to work on it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with either this sweater or its simple raglan pattern. It's yarn is a perfectly respectable Cascade 220. It has been worked from the top down and the sleeves have been separated and the body is ready to be continued. The sweater, yarn, and pattern are all blameless, I tell you. Blameless.

The only thing that happened to it was it got packed away when I moved, once, and I lost its pattern. Then I found the pattern and stuffed it into the wicker basket, with the complete intention of getting back to it someday. And I swear I will...I just wish it wouldn't look at me like that.

Next on my WIP list is a blue lace scarf, made from some of that ancient blue acrylic that has no name and no label. I know it is acrylic because I burnt it! Yes I did. If you don't know the composition of an anonymous yarn you can try a burn test and observe how it burns, if it melts, what it smells like, and what kind of residue it leaves behind. Use Google to search for "Fiber Burn Test" or "Fiber Burn Chart", or you can do like I did and use the info from The Yarn Harlot's book, Knitting Rules! I just want to warn you to snip off a bit before you go burning...some of that stuff is made from pure petroleum and the flame travels FAST.

So the old green sweater, the blue acrylic scarf that had actually been forgotten and was just unearthed the other day...what else? There is a green scarf that I am almost done with, I don't even want to count that because it's so close to being a Finished Object that I can't feel bad about it. There is a plain garter stitch washcloth that is almost done too, it is my TV watching project because I don't have to think or count or anything, just churn away on the garter stitch until it's time to turn.

That just leaves us the Big Kahuna of unfinished projects...the sweater I never finished for the Knitting Olympics. The Knitting Olympics guidelines said to find a project that you would be able to complete during the 16 days of the 2010 Winter Olympics. I chose a beautiful sweater from Jillian Moreno's Curvy Knits series, and the fact that we are even discussing it should tell you that it didn't get done in that 16 day limit. It's gorgeous though. So yeah.

I think I will finish off the washcloth, churn out the rest of that green scarf, then revisit one of the sweaters. I have a big trip this weekend so I will need a good car project, and I think the pink sweater is going to be coming with me. Come on, doesn't everyone plan for their vacation knitting?