Atlas Insider
Atlas Insider: Behind the Chifforobe
Here it is February, and the warehouse has just now caught up from the nonstop Niagara of end-of-the-year orders that began the moment Holiday Shop launched last fall. Ever since, we’ve been behind—due to our one-at-a-time-in-the-warehouse (thanks to COVID) policy. We’re healthy but we’re exhausted. And I’ll be honest: we’re pretty plum-sick of touching yarn. I kid! It’s way more than just pretty plum-sick!
One consequence of that is that I haven’t even thought about a personal knitting project since late September. At one point toward the end of the year, I even considered just putting up all of my stash and tools—yarn, needles, project bags, all of it—for sale on Ravelry and eBay and being done with knitting forever. I only resisted doing it because I thought I’d be driven insane by dye lot questions and nitpicky price dickering. If you’ve ever sold anything on eBay, you know that this is an Absolute Truth: people will spend fifty dollars of their time—and yours—arguing with you over fifty cents worth of goods.
So! I just shoved the stash cabinet drawers shut, dragged a chifforobe in front of them and decided to not think about any of it for a bit. Or ever again, really. La la la, knitting, what’s that?
But then early this week, the warehouse died down just a little. There’s always this brief pause before the launch of a new Field Guide and I like to take ONE MOMENT to gaslight my own self by thinking, “Oh look how calm everything is! Look how even-keeled I am! Look at all of those low low low blood pressure numbers!”
Which created the false illusion that I would have some free making time coming up. Ha ha ha, of course the bajillion subscriber copies of Field Guide No. 20 that we have to mail in what seems like one second mean that I do not have any free making time. but I started thinking about a project I had just barely started last spring anyway and how maaaaaybe it would be a good idea to take a look at it again and give myself something to do during all this profuse and bountiful downtime. I pushed aside the furniture blocking my yarn drawers and dug it out, like when whatsisface pried up the boards looking for the telltale heart.
The project in question is a nightmare, of course, because I am constitutionally incapable of starting a project that’s just a washcloth or a scarf or some other easy ten-rows of-garter-voila-finished kind of thing. No, I have to start some dumb knitted map of the United States. In ten thousand different shades of gray . . . even though there are only fifty states. Though by the time I finish this danged thing, there will probably be about sixty-two. Greetings, citizens of Texahoma and Northern Utahfornia!
Anyway. Here’s what it looked like when I dumped it out of the in-the-works bin.
Here’s what the whole blasted thing looks like chart-wise. Each one of those paper squares has about 3,300 stitches. And approximately one billion little bobbins of yarn. Working from the bottom, I’m up to the green tape line. Uh-huh. Pray for me.
Here’s what it looks like so far. If you’re using this thing as a map, you better have Miami as your destination.
I’ll never finish it, of course. But I’ll think about it a lot. You think I’m focusing on boxing up your order, but what I’ll really be doing for the next ninety months is wondering why the heck does New England have so many fiddly small states. WHY, Rhode Island!?
A Giveaway
We might as well give DG one more Field Guide No. 20 to pack up. The prize? A Field Guides Subscription 2022 to one lucky winner. (If you have already subscribed, thank you! You may give the prize as a gift.)
How to enter?
Two steps:
Step 1: Sign up for our weekly newsletter, Snippets, right here. If you’re already subscribed, you’re set.
Step 2: What’s your never-gonna-finish-it project? Or if you never say never, what’s the most ambitious knitting project you ever started? Tell us in the comments.
Deadline for entries: Sunday, February 13, 11:59 PM Central time. We’ll draw a random winner from the entries. Winner will be notified by email.
Always, fair isle sweaters! Smaller gauge, 3 colors per row, sure, I can hold 2 colors in my left hand! Oh, and install zippers and knitted facings, too! DG, love the Poe reference!
I traveled to Australia/New Zealand in 2000, my first of many knitting adventures. I took a class with Jo Sharp and was so excited about her new book, It had. beautiful cardigan with folk art animals on the cover. Intarsia-my first attempt-31 color changes in one row…I got about 10” of the back done and lost interest looking at all the ends to weave in. For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of the project until the moths finally put the final nail in the coffin.
A blanket made with 11 1/2 X11 1/2 in squares- so it’s just a pile of squares now. Maybe I’ll finish it someday or maybe not!
A knee length sweater coat in Armenian knitting. I have ripped it out and started over multiple times because I just cannot get gauge.
A remake using a sweater I frogged. Can’t recommend frogging- I always go for the new shiny stuff. That will always get used first!
I started Magically Thinking before I knew much about knitting. It’s a hot mess that will get frogged before finishing.
A map of Canada might be easier! Thank you for a hearty laugh on a cold ice crusted day in Nova Scotia.
Foxthoughts cardigan (with a steel) by La Bien Aimee….
A shawl that is tricky for me. Have to really concentrate. That’s not happening so much these days so I’m knitting easier stuff.
A queen size blanket. It’s too warm to even work on in the winter.
That’s funny! But what would you do with all the leftover shades of gray…
I started an easy garter stitch shawl way back in 2020. I thought the color changes of the yarn would hold my interest, but I was wrong. I’m probably half way through, and could finish it. Bit, it’s so boring! I’ll probably frog it and use the yarn for a more exciting knitting project.
A cozy for my very-preemie, one-pounder, newborn.
Who is now in university….
I have a newborn sleep sack knit in cotton that’s all but done. It only needs the snap tape… my preemie is also in college, and his two cousins are 8 and 6. Apparently, it will stay in the bag with the snap tape ready to go until he throws it out after I’m gone.
Congratulations, Mom! I had a 29 week preemie who is 52 and HER oldest is set to graduate from university a year early. Don’t tell me I’m not a proud Mom and Nana!
Yes!
I love this one!!
A top down raglan marled fade sweater. I’ve frogged it twice. I’ll try again when I’m retired.
For sure, I had a large stash I promised myself I’d use up after I’d retired – … well, it’s been 13 years now… Fortunately my sister visited & dealt with anything that wasn’t exquisite or wool! Go figure!
I’m retired and here to warn you: it never gets any easier to manage my (or your?) time!
I started what I thought was a simple kitchen towel 4 years ago that I’m pretty sure will never be finished. It’s knit in linen stitch in fingering weight cotton, and while I love the look of it, every minute I spend working on it sucks a little bit more life out of my soul!
I have one of those too! Why is it so tedious?!?!
I just started a temperature blanket. We’ll see…
I have a sweater I finished all the parts but when I blocked it realized one side of the cardigan is one inch longer than the other! Have all the pieces. What to do?
I’ve seen patterns where that is done on purpose! Wear it with pride-tell people it’s your own design element!
I adore lace and am infatuated with an ivory lace-weight shawl I started 5-1/2 years ago. Problem is I unraveled almost as much as I knit, so it’s been sitting quite unfinished in my closet now for at least 4 years. I look at it and sigh…
(1) it’s not Rhode Island that will kill you – have you ever looked at Maryland? (2) so many afghans lying around begging me to sew the squares together. One dates back to 2008. The odds aren’t good. (3) why shades of gray?
Lol yeah, why shades of grey? And why 10,000 when you only need fifty…
Kafffe Fassett’s Jubilee Throw: 2/3 of the way through, but zzzzing at present.Will it ever get finished?
I haven’t met a knitting project that has intimidated me. It’s just sticks and string after all. Stash management however is completely different. I have told my kids who to invite over to shop my stash when I’m gone.
My never finish project is a Kaffe Fasset scarf. All those threads going at once drive me up the wall.
I had made the mistake of telling a friend who likes sheep about the 2 Princess Diana’s sheep sweaters that I had knit using a size 0 and 1 needles. She’s begging me to knit her one!!!
Norma, just smile, sigh and say no
They have reissued that sweater in more colors. My daughter picked it out as a Christmas present. They were having a sale, so buying it was probably cheaper than buying the yarn. She got it in a light blue. I crocheted her a sweater that I did at least twice because of all the pulling out. I’m a knitter not a crocheter.
I can’t think of anyone I would do that for.
Because I cant think of anyone I know who would appreciate just how much time, effort, and money went into it.
An Alice Starmore (St. Brigid). Love it, but zzzz.
A shawl for me. Which always gets pushed aside for some other project for someone else.
I have an Alice Starmore sweater languishing away somewhere too-not St B though. Mine has you twisting cables on BOTH sides of the work. Sigh. One day…
A baby sweater, begun for my newborn niece, who is now in college.
My Glenesk pullover is patiently waiting for me, maybe a quarter done. I have every intention of finishing it, someday someday someday! Just typing these words is giving me the Starmore itch!
I made myself a beautiful cozy comfy Wonderful Wallaby using 3 different yarns. Then I lost weight and I moved to a warmer state so that Wonderful Wallaby needed to be downsized. Which meant unraveling. I’ve unraveled about 2/3 of it, That was about 4 yrs ago… I have plans to reknit that Wallaby using 2 of the yarns…someday…
A cardigan that’s about 80% done that’s been sitting for several years. And for no good reason.
Likely to never be touched again is a big pink sweater. What was I thinking itchy bubblegum yarn??
Currently on needles- NG’s cabled counterpane with -it seems- ever increasing cables knit on the diagonal panels with many errata in the book pattern- and the same panel knit 6 times – and then the sewing of seams.
Why a map?
A counted cross-stitch of Thomas Hardy’s cottage and garden started in the 1980s when I could see the stitches. Groan . . .
Also an Alice Starmore Fair Isle! Never again!
One of my first learning to knit projects . . . A sampler Afghan in terrible yarn. It’s quite ugly and has been bundled up in a bag and moved from NC to RI to MA. I think this might be the year it gets donated to the local fabric and fiber sales at my local library. They love WIPS, even ugly ones.
Where do you live?
Cape Cod . . the sale is at the Woods Hole Public Library . . . usually held on Super Bowl Sunday but rescheduled to March 13 due to Covid . . . anyone in the area should definitely come by . . . It is a super fun fundraiser for the library. If you’re looking to go through your stash for a good cause, people from all over donate. Cheers!
I started a beaded wrap that has a Gothic feel to it. The pattern is “Lucy Westenra’s Wrap in the winter 2021 edition of Interview Knits. I want to finish this project, like I want to finish all my projects, and hopefully I will.
A sweater that is 90% complete but that’s it’s ever going to be
A sweater for my husband. I thought being already married to him for 5 years would save me from the curse. Instead, it was the project that was cursed. He wanted the world’s most plain gray fingering weight sweater. And he wanted “that pattern. But not quite can you please change this and this and that?” I dislike the feel of the yarn he chose. Then there was a moth situation a few years in to this boondoggle. It’s been 6 years and I recently resurrected it so I could pretend I would ever finish it for him.
The Fair aisle sweater I started for my hubby will likely never see completion. I tried to talk him into a vest after we moved south but his refusal has left all that J & S sitting in a bag with a favorite knitting needle in it. Not sure if I should rip out, buy another needle or question the stability of the marriage.
There’s always hope. I had a quilt that sat as a wip for over 30 years that go completed just after Covid hit. My knitting wip, while not so grand as a map of ugh country, is a Pi shawl. In the beginning it was so quick and gratifying. Now each row seems endless!
I am pretty good at finishing things, but I have one project started and it’s a small double sided lace scarf Every time I think of picking it up I get a shiver and change my mind. I haven’t frogged it yet because I keep thinking the day will come when it doesn’t intimidate me anymore.
A tunic length linen blend cardigan with a hood, all in lace! What was I thinking….
Oh my what a project I have going on. I haven’t worked on it for several years, but I was making a free form (think shape and color) scarf for my artsy daughter, about 11 finished sweaters and multiple small project later, the scarf still sits.
So fun. I bought the DVD on how to make an Orenburg shawl with thread so gossamer the whole thing will fit through my wedding ring. -Gorgeous. Never going to do it…
I have an afghan I started, oh maybe 15-20 years ago. Two strands of yarn, on ginormous needles. Pretty enough, but now it is so big and heavy and the the large needles hurt my hands and shoulders and wah wah wah. What to do, what to do. Donate as is- on the needles and with the directions showing where I left off??? Rip the whole thing out and wind? Set on fire in the driveway? Oooo I think I like that one-
My most ambitious project that I’ll never finish is an oversized afghan made of all different knitted squares and tassels all around the perimeter. Started it, then lost interest, re-started, (you get the idea) and then put it away in the back of my knitting closet and have concentrated on knitting sweaters ever since. It’s not that I don’t want to resume working on it; it’s just that it seems overwhelming!
So glad you asked. I just pulled out my Dogwood Knitpicks from a kit FairIsle cardigan, which I set down about ten years ago, because I’ve decided to make the sleeves raglan, instead of set in, and I need to do some figuring. Added level of difficulty, I lost the original pattern, went ahead and ordered a new one, but it’s in three different colorways, so I have to figure out which of my colors correspond to theirs.
My never-gonna-finish project was a hexipuff blankie from leftover yarn bits.
I schlepped that around for far too long and when I assembled my accumulated pieces on my table, anticipating I should surely be at least halfway to a decent sized throw, I found that it was the most underwhelming size. I’m generally willing to frog and recover any yarn (yes, even mohair). But I was so pissed off that I made the pieces I had into a cat blanket for my sister’s cat carrier. (To this day I get a whiff of irritation when I glimpse that cat blankie, but I’m grateful it found a lovely home!)
In a tote (somewhere) I’ve a dolman-sleeve Rowan cardigan in Hempathy yarn. The design has zig-zag bottom edges. Think clown and yes, that dolman from c1990. So cool!
I have a good completion rate except for two afghans.
One was knit in squares by friends and family of the betrothed 20 years ago and given to me to see together.
The couple divorced after a year and the beautiful “squares” were not uniform due to the variation in people’s tension. Why did no one suggest gauge?
The other also a wedding present was for a couple who moved from Oregon to Mexico.
Both are made of luxurious white (not my color choice) yarn lacking stitch definition, practicality or joy for the knitter.
The second couple now have three children and a dog….and are moving back to New England but have since admitted to having a wool allergy?!
A blanket I started in 1996. Eeek!
Afghan for my daughter’s dorm room her freshman year. She’s going to be thirty this year. I let her pick the yarn, the colors, and the pattern.
So a good lesson was learned, if you’re not crazy about any of those three DON”T promise it. I didn’t like any of them and so it languishes half way done. Can’t give up, can’t unravel. Stuck in never never yarnland…
I started a sweater in 2016 and completed all the pieces. All that’s left is to stitch it together. I don’t hate finishing up a piece, but for some reason can’t make myself finish this one.
I have a lace weight shawl in hibernation since 2010, it is 2/3 of the way and it haunts me every so often.
I cannot help but smile at the “ never going to finish” project. I have been working on a very large miter square afghan since 2014! I am proud to say I started working on it and the end date is unclear
I started a mitered square afghan kit from Knit Picks called Hue Shift because I loved the colors. I even bought a second kit of yarn because folks online warned that the kit was skimpy on enough yarn to finish. Found out on square 1 that the insane amount of ends to weave in was overwhelming. Put that bad boy away and haven’t touched it since. Can’t bring myself to re home it either. I just keep moving it from box to bin to closet. Probably should include it’s disposition in my will.
I made two of them! The yarn is so slippery that I was afraid weaving in the ends would unravel so for the 2nd one I used a little dot of fabric glue on each one. Now the otherwise soft afghan has little hard ‘picks’ It’s pretty, though.
I started a Hue Shift for my grandson before he was born in March 2017. I didn’t mind the ends, but I let the gauge get away from me and “finished” it when it was about a 1/4-sized corner of the whole…fortunately, just the right size for a baby blanket. All the other skeins went into my stash, and mostly remain there, since I rarely use un-natural fiber in my knitting.
I started mine just after my husband died 8 years ago and I still haven’t finished the first quarter. Every once in a while I pick it up and knit a few rows. At this speed it should be finished by the year 2099.
Sounds simple for most but a vintage Christmas stocking … never did socks before and the heel threw me …
A cardigan that has one sleeve that’s too tight. Can’t decide if I want to frog the sleeve and try again or frog the whole thing and forget about it!
Too many. There is nothing as endorphin producing as casting on a new project!
I knit an intarsia sweater replicating a Van Gogh painting of fishing boats pulled up on a beach. It think it had twenty seven colours, Although my memory is blocking some of that pain.
Omg I think you win the prize! The responses have been hilarious, and I especially enjoyed yours. I have a post card of one of the paintings in the same series – fishing boats in a village called something-St Marie. Wonderful paintings!
The one that will absolutely never be finished is a cabled fisherman’s sweater that I put down one spring without noting where I was on each of the cables (of course I’d remember!). Now it wouldn’t fit if I could figure it out. I haven’t even had the energy to unravel it! But I also have 2 sweaters on sleeve island and a Carbeth cardigan that needs one underarm sewn and buttons, but there is some hope that I might finish those!!
I’m knitting a Safe At Home blanket that I hope to finish by Christmas 22. Wish me luck.
Me too!
A scarf. For me. I love making hats and baby blankets and finished 15 hats for Christmas. For family and friends. I just can’t seem to finish a scarf for myself.
An Anticipation jacket. In theory, large needles, big yarn finish in a snap, right? Nope. The loopy cuffs took a minute to get the hang of and I axed the hood. And then ” it’s not me it’s you” and we broke up forever a half sleeve from completion and assembly. It’s in the frog pond awaiting reassignment as slippers….
A cardigan for my husband. He bought the yarn, all 2000g of it, about 4.4 pounds back in 2008. Did he like any patterns I showed him? No. One he didn’t like because of the colour. Dude you already bought the yarn! Simple he wanted. My design please but with set in sleeves. I got the body and sleeves done from the bottom up but the set in sleeves eluded me so it languished, stuck at the underarms. I eventually decided it was too sloppy looking anyway and frogged that sucker two years ago. He still wants the sweater.
A mitered square, modular blanket made with fingering weight remains of other projects – i thought this would be a good way to use up stash yarn I love.
A pair of socks. I have the first sock done, but can’t find the yarn to start the second. I’ve kept the first sock for years in my stash. I know the minute I toss the sock, I’ll find the yarn.
I finished one orange-blue-green sock only to find out my son only wears black socks! That sock will never get its mate!
I have single sock syndrome also! My second sock is not going to match the first one colorwise-just for fun!
You gotta try doing 2 at a time. It’s a game changer…
My most ambitious project is actually not knit, but crochet. It’s a thread full-size bedspread. At this point, it’s about 1/4 done but I’ve misplaced the pattern so it’s probably a lost cause. But you never know…
As a new knitter I started the Inara wrap and managed to lose a stitch about 2 inches in. I tried several times to find it but now it sits w/ all the rest of the yarn in my projects area. I always find other things t make or do, so I don’t know if I will ever finish it.
I have 2 cardigans vacationing on sleeve island for years. Will they ever be rescued? Perhaps.
Sleeve island?
I believe this is where all there is left is the sleeves and yet they seem to take so long to do you feel marooned!
You are my hero! I barely knit, 1completed hat so far, so of course I bought a kit for a full size sampler blanket!
I have two blankets that are currently in perpetual purgatory. One is a scandanavian themed granny square blanket. The other is a navajo themed lap blanket that requires a bit of stranding……… neither is quick…………. (sigh)
I had a mitered square fingering weight scrap blanket that sat for years. When Covid hit, and we all went sideways a pulled it out. I did finish it- amazing what hours of Netflix will do.
Blanket made from left over sock yarn, right now not even large enough for a baby, but will be an afghan, seeing as I have knitted dozens of socks, and lace shawls and scarves in my knitting life.
I have a sweater, started over 25 years ago still on the needles waiting patiently for me to get around to it.
I had a blanket that I started and pulled out several times over the years to work on. It was so hot, with all that bulk, that I could only work on it during the coldest days of winter. Then, it finally never got pulled out, until one year I gave up on it and frogged the whole thing. I still have the yarn though.
A baby blanket for my now middle aged sonl
Of you ask if I crochet, I’d say no, yet I have a crocheted afghan that I started over 20 years ago and every 5 years or so I drag it out and make a few more squares.
I knitted a cardigan but it’s too long and I need to frog it. Some day I’ll get around to fixing it.
A cabled afghan for the back of my couch. The yarn color goes with the couch so well. But by the time I finish it, I will probably have a new couch!
Two intarsia sweaters from the late 1990’s. Two young children and a full-time job left no bandwidth for focused knitting. One is a Rowan kit purchased at the Liberty store in London. I still recall that lovely adventure. I do want to finish them. I might buy a Knit From the Tangle poster for inspiration.
Likely the “sock yarn scraps” blanket started in 2014. Made about 4 narrow strips and bagged it. Still resides in the bookcase. Never say never…
A beautiful, complicated Christmas tree skirt that went in and out of hibernation for at least ten years – I finally finished it during the pandemic.
I know I will feel like I will never finish it, once I start it. (Maybe this week?) But, hey! No never-finish project ever got finished if it never got started. Right? 5 weeks late Temperature Blanket. I got this.
It took a pandemic. I knit 24 individual houses based on https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/copenhagen-building-blocks-2 which is 4’ x4’ and I now have a beautiful framed mural on my wall.
Socks on 0 needles . Good luck with the map!
Sigh. SO MANY UFOs. The Mood Cardigan is kicking my momentum butt. Love it, love the yarn, but….sigh. Maybe this is its year.
I did finish it, late but finished. A double knit Afghan knit in squares, every one different Star Wars, mandalorian, math and science themes. Reversible, including three letters. I knit one s three times, but it was reversible and correctly aligned. Tops a queen sized bed.
An Alice Starmore pullover from the mid 90’s , halted when I ran out of one of the greens. Still have all so maybe someday.
Thanks.
An unfinished and very complicated color project absolutely haunts me! It challenges me in several ways: what was I thinking choosing something so complicated? Why haven’t I been able to face it again? When will I fit it back in to my knitting routine? Why is it haunting me? (Breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth)
An intarsia baby blanket (the intended recipient baby is now 9) will never be finished. Turns out I don’t like knitting intarsia. I still have hopes for the sweater that’s been hibernating for 14 years.
I started a mitred square blanket before my daughter was born (she’s 10 now). But now I’m thinking maybe it would be a good idea to extend my deadline and make it as an “off to college” gift. If that doesn’t happen, I can always save it as a “first grandchild” project, right?
I started a patchwork blanket that’s basically 5 long scarves of 5 different blocks knit continuously. It’s been sitting in a bag for a lot of years now because the thought of those 4 very long sewn seams and then picking up a billion stiches around the outside edge to knit a garter stitch border is sooooo daunting!
I made one of those as a wedding gift for my daughter. The plan was to have it ready for the shower, but it was still in strips. I clipped them together with wonder clips and packed it in a Home Depot bucket that I labelled “under construction”. Finally sewed it together and it was done 2 weeks after the wedding, but I never did a border. Oh well….might ask for it back to do a border someday. I’m making a pillow with the remainder yarns anyway….
Well, I started a blanket, but other things keep calling me away from it. So I’ll finish it just in time for summer?
I took a sock class years ago because I wanted to learn and the theme yarn was Harry Potter. I knit one sock and never knit its mate. I don’t know why. I’ve knit many pairs of socks since then but just can’t get myself to knit the second one. If you see Dobby send him my way I’ll set him free!
Temperature scarf. Seemed like a good idea and easy to do (just a few rows each day? How easy is that, she said). It started to feel like a torment; along with the thought of all the ends to weave in came the realization that I didn’t know what would I do with it when it was finished, too long to wear and nowhere to hang it. So it sits, stuck in the eternal month of abandonment ….
A fisherman’s Aran weight sweater that no longer fits. Ack,
whole pile of blanket squares. wonderful silk garden. great colors. thanks for the reminder
I’ve made giant Afghans that will double as a bedspread, oversized fisherman sweaters and blankets, but my favorite project is a simple ball band washcloth or watchcap
A beautiful maple leaf shawl that has been in time-out for about 7 years.
My grandmother passed in 1978. I inherited a kit for a fisherman’s knit wool sweater with matching wool yardage for a shirt. It’s still in the original box. Almost 44 years ago…
I have a never-ending throw made of small squares knit together out of the leftovers of what looks like hundreds of pairs of socks and many shawls. It might make a good doll bed blanket at the size it is now, but I will persevere, in between all of my other projects!
Right now I have a sweater on sleeve island that I am really dreading picking up, so I have been procrastinating with making hats and ear warmers for a while now. It is really good at using up leftover half skeins of yarn though
A Vivian Hoxboro vest kit that I purchased at our GBKG auction at least five years ago! Love the colors and design !
I made that blanket! I had each color in a paper lunch bag labeled with the states it would be used for and everything was in a big Rubbermaid tub. It was tedious, but so worth it. I put a flannel lining on the back. It was an instant favorite of Daddy and Kitty.
My current everlasting project is a series of gstockinette rectangles that I will eventually felt, cut and sew into a Mola-inspired rug.
An exquisite Kaffe Fassett sweater I attempted as a somewhat novice knitter. He did a book signing at a long-departed LYS and I was mesmerized by his designs. I pulled it out recently – I will finish it!
I hate to say “never gonna finish” because you never know, but some projects are in the high probability category. Kaffe’s Chinese Rose Jacket that I started from a kit 9 billion years ago is the most likely candidate. I won’t include Kaffe’s Jubilee Throw because even if I don’t finish it the squares are pretty enough to be framed.
I started a stash-busting, wool (purchased in 1996), striped in-the-round sweater – the first I tried to do without a a pattern using EZ’s formula. Finished it about 8 years ago and never liked the fit. 2 years ago, I decided to do my first ever steek and make it a cardigan – what harm could it do? It was either that or make it a bag or pillow. Last week I finished off the hem and I just can’t bring myself to do a button band, so I may just get a clasp-type closure and call it done. Actually, I call it my Frankenstein’s monster sweater. I live in S. Florida, so you can imagine how much use this will get, but IT IS NO LONGER A WIP!
A purple mohair sweater that’s too big, with one sleeve half done. I just know I won’t wear it and I don’t think I can rip it out (thanks sticky mohair, and 2 yarns held together!) Maybe if I give it another year or two it will shrink?
This made me laugh so hard! Such knitter brain thinking!
Not a single project but too many large things at once; I currently have three very large (7 skeins + each) shawls in progress which really delays the FO gratification
A Kaffe Fassett cardigan. Not going to happen.
This Yara shawl…good lord.
My Kaffe stranded stripe throw from the field guide. The original is ambitious but I decided to make it wider and to add a bunch of other Kaffe patterns from one of his books. Some of the others have four colors in a row and I do not especially enjoy instarsia. I do it a bit at a time and will finish it eventually. That map project is fabulous and I love your decision to do it in grays. It looks like you are done with the boring bit at the beginning and now the fun begins!
A cotton counterpane in 2 shades of blue that I started in 1998. Pretty little squares with a leaf on each one. I think about it sometimes, then look at the cats, think about claws and hair, and say naah. Maybe someday I’ll finish it for my niece, she’s allergic to cats.
A Baby Surprise sweater . . .got lost when baby grew faster than sweater!
I just frogged one from a baby who is now 8. Couldn’t figure out where i was in the pattern, tired of trying, freed the yarn!
I’ve got lots of just started/almost-but-not-quite-done projects, but I’d really like to finish my color explosion throw (haven’t yet finished the first strip). Starting chemo next week, so hoping to work on it there.
Good luck with chemo, I hope knitting makes the time pass more easily. The color explosion moves really quickly if you commit to finishing one box pattern row in the morning and one in the evening, or even just one in a day. I’m on the last three boxes of the last strip, never knitted anything so fast in 40 years! Bon chance!
I have 2 beautiful ponchos started. One is a gorgeous baby blue, the same yarn and yarn color as the pattern called for in the magazine. I started it in 2013..I am sure it will be devoured by moths one day very soon. The other I started in 2018..a pattern and yarn that I just couldn’t wait to start. Apparently finishing isn’t going to happen…
Ugh, I just examined The Project yesterday after having moved the mental chifforobe out from in front of it. (And then I just stole its needles, ha.) The Project is a lovely t-shirt top with lace from shoulder to upper back and chest; its pattern is written for fingering, but I had to go make it of DK linen. And the neck stitches are Not Cooperating. So it’s been in permafrost for a couple of years.
A crochet wolf afghan with intricate borders. I don’t even crochet! REALLY what was I thinking!!
Okay. For me, socks. Socks! I need a buddy who will sit right next to me.
One sleeve left on a cardigan that turned out smaller than I planned.
I’ve made most of a sweater for myself, but it’s too small. I keep intending to rip out what I’ve done (although it’s got all the seaming in it, and pockets and everything) and start over with the yarn. But I can’t bear to face that yet, so I’ve stuffed it to the bottom of a bin, and there it remains…
My downfall was a knit swirl sweater. I was so excited to start it which was a good thing because I started it several times. The cast on had a billion stitches and I could never join without twisting. I then thought I was doing well until I had knit a few rows and could see the twist. A LOT of yarn was purchased and a LOT of knitting was done with no actual progress.
A temperature blanket – as a knitter, I made the mistake of crocheting squares. All the squares are done, now the arduous task of crocheting them together – and there they sit for three years. One day…..
I bought yarn for a temperature blanket a couple of years ago. Had the colors picked for the temps, everything ready. Never actually knitted a single row. This year, I’ve been watching everyone run around, starting temperature blankets and I have been pointing and laughing. More power to you! I have come to understand that I am a single skein only project completer. It is also best if that single skein is highly portable and not very big.
Intarsia Christmas Tree Blanket
Why is it always a baby sweater? I get to the sleeves and slow down….maybe the next baby can wear this!!
A blanket with colorwork sheep, alpacas and other fiber animals – doubtful it will ever get done but it is sooo pretty and cute and all that.
A raglan sleeve, cable front pullover sweater. I spent quite a bit of time making sure I was getting gauge, since this was going to be my first sweater, but when it was done enough to try on, it was clearly going to be too small. I bagged it up rather than ripping it out because I told myself that it is lovely knitting and would fit someone if I finished it. HA! Like I’ll ever be the knitter who knits a sweater for someone else!
Sadly, it may be my Moderne but I do hope to actually pick it back up again one day.
I have been working on a fingering weight stole/wrap for several years. There is lace along one border. Very nice, but so, so long, especially in the thin yarn. But I am 7/8 done. It will be lovely!
Alpaca Polka Dot Scarf from Churchmouse. Beautiful yarn but so fine, and slippery on the needles!
I’ve got a lovely blanket where all the yarn first needs to be treated to fix the colors. Lots of yarn, lots of drying and rewinding before the first stitch is knit. Someday!
My never gonna finish project is the”Aran American Afghan” that I started a a wedding present for my son and daughter-in-law in early 2004. Each block by a different designer in a different gauge……I actually got a s far as the continuous cable edge and put it in time out.
I haven’t over committed to a too large project: however, I can’t say that about my stash. Spending a good bit of time to organize storage of the stash, inventory it, and put it on an Excel file has given me a better sense of control,
Any pair of socks I started knitting pre-COVID because the stitch count is now too small and just about any sweater where I’ve gotten to the sleeves because Sleeve Island it a black hole for me.
I have a poncho in fingering weight yarn that’s about 1/3 done. It’s been sitting on my needles for about 5 years. I don’t even want to frog it because it’s a fuzzy yarn.
Don’t even ask….but I certainly don’t get the heebee geebees reading about anyone else’s. And Norm L: just go “suggest” that she knit her own blankety-blank. Or sweater. Life’s too short. (Unless you really wanna.)
Alas! Scarves are my downfall! I keep starting them, full of gusto, then summer happens and the spirit is no longer willing! I know I should continue on the old ones but new is always more appealing!
I started a Safe At Home blanker. I’m still on the first strip. Since I’m using hand me down leftover yarn (and not the colors suggested and plotted out by the designer) I get decision fatigue. What colors for this roof? What color for this door? What color for these windows? There’s nine little houses in a strip. I don’t know when I’ll pull it out again.
I found a beautiful sweater pattern that I love that has a tree line design along the bottom. I had in mind exactly how I wanted it to look (yarn wise). I was in a low spot during the early pandemic days and purchased yarn for the sweater but wasn’t able to get the colors I wanted. I bought the wrong colors. Totally wrong colors. Colors I wouldn’t wear if it was the last beautiful sweater out there in the world. So, I have all the materials to make a beautiful sweater that I hate. Needless to say, the yarn was quite expensive and my best option is to send it to my friend Barb who makes lap robes for the folks at the senior center. And start all over and buy the correct yarn. And then knit the sweater in the colors I originally wanted. But I am not there yet. Maybe I am getting closer, though!! At least I can talk about it now….
A certain, specific fair isle sweater that needs to have the saddle shoulders self-charted.
I know I will most likely never finish a cardigan I started back in the 90’s that was in Vogue Knitting magazine. It had tea cups on the front and a teapot on the back. All I have left to do is the left front and sleeves but the intarsia knitting just makes me tired thinking about it.
Right now I have part of a brioche vest on needles that I have ripped and started again so many times. I think this will be its state forever. Knit, frog, knit,,,,,,
5 skeins of fingering weight yarn that is supposed to turn into a shawl with a mystery knit a long at least 5 years ago…
Back in the old days (before knitting patterns and independent designers took over the internet) I spun yarn for a sweet little lacy cardigan with a peplum. I couldn’t find a pattern that was even close to the vision in my head so I decided to make it up myself. It actually went pretty well, but I had to pause it to figure out one part. That was about 2009, haven’t touched it since. No way it’s going to fit now and I probably wouldn’t like the style any more. Probably need to frog it!
I’ve yet to start a project and not finish it, but there’s a stunning purple tweed Celtic traveller’s blanket that’s been put assise then dragged back out for over a year now…
Persian Dreams Blanket. It has 24 hexagons, with six different patterns, at least six different colors in each hexagon, and is knitted on size 2 needles. In the past three years I have completed six hexagons. My dream is to eventually finish it.
I find fingering weight FairIsle adult size sweaters very challenging but I l love the look of them in that weight!
One, or two? sweaters waiting in their project bags in the closet.
A quilt that I never finished embroidering much less quilting.
Lots and lots of twelve inch squares that I was never going to sew together.
A sweater that I actually had completed knitting and did not sew one final seam!
I donated all to charity to take away some of my guilt.
Now do mostly simple socks enjoying my yarn, the colors and most of all the process and portability.
I hate saying this but my Sipsey’s Folly/Suzie Sweater. I started it in 2013. I knit the full yoke 3 times and am on my 4th try. My gauge was always way off no matter what needles I used. I loved that sweater the minute I saw it. Bought the Craftsy class and jumped in. How hard could it be? It’s a simple sweater. Well, that sweater destroyed my y confidence. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again?? Yeah, that didn’t work for me. I still love the sweater but the thought of pulling it out and trying again makes me want to cry. So, I think that’s the one that sadly will never get finished.
I can’t remember a knitting project that took forever but I did an embroidery project of the map of the US surrounded by all the state flowers. I started it in 1969 and put it down after a few months. A few years later I picked it up and finished it ( in 1973). Last year, 2021, I finally framed it. As for complicated knitting projects, I finished an Alice Starmore Mary Tudor sweater last year and it was challenging because my row gauge was never right, causing adjusting that compicatedly precise pattern so that isn’t had the right fit. I’m happy with both projects.
I have started 3″ squares for a granny square blanket. Out of sock yarn. Because a much as I love knitting, I adore the look of perfect little granny squares
A lace baby dress for my niece who is now in her 40,’s. I started when I was a teen and new knitter- overly ambitious — lace knitting in the round ,etc the directions are Lon lost, I just counted how many times I must have moved this. Planned to finish it when she started having children but now her youngest is 4 and I fear that I’ve missed the boat. I think I should frog it and make a simple baby blanket for the next child in the extended family. All the stories let me know I am not alone, but I do think this must be one of the oldest works in process.
As always, thank you for the giggle.
We’ve been in this house for three months. The only parts as yet unpacked are my office & fiber studio (Yes!). The temptation to give it all away rather than face it is real.
My most ambitious project has been a queen size fingering weight log cabin blanket. It was my bed-knitting project with no set deadline. It took years, but I got it done.
I have long admired intricate fairisle sweaters but know that it would take the rest of my life and then some…so I resist. Maybe a hat or a cowl would be a better choice!
I have a rug made of cut up t shirts. It is on giant needles, so that’s no fun. Also I need more shirts I think. Am I remembering correctly that this is a MDK idea?
My never ending project…weekend home upgrades. Such problems have I.
Goodness, probably a shawl for which I need to just do a citric acid soak. I have everything…I just would rather knit what I have.
“Free to Fly” as my first (& so far, only) color work project.
The Alinda Wrap…it’s lace weight (need I say more?)
A double knitting scarf from a pattern that goes on for hundreds of rows. Sigh.
One of my early sweaters that I did not buy enough yarn for.
DG, you always brighten my morning with a laugh! Keep on writing and knitting!
My most ambitious project was a ski sweater for my then boyfriend (now husband) while in high school.
The Christmas Sweater. Kit purchased at least 30 years ago by my husband as a gift for me, this sweater has a log cabin with twirly smoke arising from the chimney, grazing reindeer, fir trees laden with new-fallen snow. It was beyond my capabilities at the time although I gave it a try (see weirdly-twisted, every other row of stockinette). It is now hopelessly out of style but it sits in a plastic bin where two years ago, I got it out and started over….only to abandon it again! Where’s Marie Kondo when you need her?!
The Kaffe Stranded Striped Throw from Field Guide 13 Master Class. High hopes for finishing this winter!
A Fox Paws shawl, all those color changes and increases and decreases. Urrgg! Last I worked on or was the beginning of the pandemic.
I can’t thank everyone enough who replied this morning for their comments. I have not laughed and smiled this much for such a long time! Not to mention commiserate too. I have a frightening number of WIPs but probably the oddest is a 1980s jacquard pattern from Elegance knitting. When I started it I was just learning to knit and no one had ever mentioned, let alone explained gauge to me. I did finish the front and the back is still on the needles with all its 27 bobbins of yarn. Maybe I can felt it for a dog coat?
A fair isle sweater – as a beginner knitter.
Anything fair isle!
My mother’s afghan – strips of royal blue basketweave and gold cables. I learned how to do cables on it. I remember her starting it when I was around 6 (I’m turning 71 in April). She finished it enough to use it and when she died I found the rest of the yarn. Never say never.
One summer, about 20 years ago, I bought a kit of fingering weight yarn to make a sleeveless top. Simple, right? It is still sitting in a bag with about two inches done and every so often I look at it and then put it back in the cupboard. Not even the pandemic made a difference, although I have done plenty of other knitting projects over the past two years. I don’t even feel guilty about it any more!
A log cabin blanket out of left over felted tweed yarn. A couple completed squares are waiting for more to be knit!! Maybe I need some new felted tweed for inspiration!
The Orenburg lace scarf I started in 2014. A fairly simple pattern, really—all garter, simple yo’s and k2tog with an occasional, exciting k3tog. Lace weight on size 1 needles. Sigh.
OMG.
I am looking through my enormous stash in the wild (not just on Ravelry). Found all the yarn for an All Colors Sweater (with extra black to fit my voluptuous body), which I purchased not too long ago (2016). Now thinking like you, maybe I should release this yarn to a new owner as I now realize this would not look great on me and it’s too much knitting to make it for someone else.
Dithering over the decision.
Surprisingly to me, a sequence knitted scarf that’s accompanied me to Holland, Portugal and Arizona. Those Zauberballs are so colorful and seem to go on forever! I just want to see what the next 2 colors will look like…
I made the Bergere “749 cardigan” with fox heads as the yoke design. Talk about bobbins! Intarsia, each fox head had several. Mine was the only finished project with the pattern as written in Ravelry.
So impressive!! And beautiful on your lovely model!!
Yes, it’s beautiful!!!
Oh my god I went and looked this up – I died when I saw the intarsia on the needle pic you posted.
W
O
W
I have learned some knitting lessons from my previous life as a cross-stitcher. My only ‘never-to-be finished’ projects are overambitious cross-stitch projects, since I can no longer even see the holes in the 32 count fabric. My knitting life only gets to include one current project, and one waiting in the wings(and maybe one more snuck in the middle). Anyone want cross-stitch fabric?
A temperature blanket that I ambitiously casted on like 350 stitches about 2 years ago. Only knitted the month of January which took longer than I thought it would. Ended up “unknitting” (as my kids use to say) and put the yarn in my stash. Maybe a temperature scarf some day would be a better project.
I’m really a sweater person. The more complicated the fair isle, or Aran pattern, the better. It relaxes me. But I’ve got two shawls that I wound the yarn for in anticipation of our big cross country move. We’ve been here a year now, and I haven’t seen them. One is supposed to look like bird foot prints in the snow, all the footprints going in different directions, requiring little tags telling you which direction that one goes in. One is a butterfly shawl. They sound pretty, don’t they?
A double knit shawl with an 80+ row chart repeat. I’ve knit one repeat only. Probably will never get back to it
I have a pi shawl on the needles with probably 4-5 weekends of knitting left. But the project I will probably never finish is a garter stitch scarf knit with two yarns held together throughout. Too boring.
How about a project that has never been started?
It is a sweater. The yarn is beautiful. It has been languishing for 3 years. I am going to do it!
I started the Covid patchwork blanket a year and a half ago. Stopped because I decided I didn’t really want a reminder of this time commemorated with something I love to do.
“Whatshisface” LOL. Most ambitious project is one I finally finished (Noctuidae sweater) but the linger-longer project is a seed-stitch blanket using fingering weight yarn. What in the world was I thinking?!
That Noctuidae sweater is gorgeous! With a name like that, I had to look it up.
Have you seen all that Felted Tweed in my stash? Do you know what it’s going to be? Let me know when you figure that out and I’ll get right on it!
I’m new to knitting Fair Isle. I just fell in love with the Kaffe Fassett Lydia scarf. So I am making a cowl and so far it’s not an accordion!
A fan design purse started almost 20 years ago
A cardigan in started last year bring knit in the most expensive yarn I’ve ever purchased make up if linen and silk.
I guess it might be the gradient sweater, the yarn is just sitting there looking beautiful!
A sweater I’ve started and frogged a couple hundred times, because my ADHD knitting brain is sidelined by another shiny sweater pattern when I’m about half-way through (and bored) with the current one.
Decided to crochet a giant, complicated blanket to sharpen up my crochet skills. Ripped it out many times but finally on the right track now thanks to a crochet buddy. Hope to have it finished by the next Ice Age.
A blue mohair lace weight sweater started in the 80’s..I kid you not….it just surfaced a few months ago still on the needles without the pattern of course. It actually still looks pretty and so I searched and searched and found the pattern in an old knitting magazine and I just may finish it!!!
I am more stubborn than yarn. I leave the intimidating ones around long enough and eventually I say “You don’t scare me” and have at it.
A lace shawl from a class I took ten years ago!
I haven’t been overly ambitious in my knitting career thus far, but I dream of making a double knit blanket from Lucy Neatby.
I will never have an unfinished project. I can’t handle the unfinished projects judging me silently for not finishing. After that have sat for enough time that I realize I don’t know why I even started it in the first place, they are frogged. And I magically have more yarn to add to my stash!
I started a sweater in mohair yarn around 2008. I knit most of the back. It’s a really basic drop-sleeve pattern that I don’t love anymore, and the needles fell out somewhere along the way so I don’t even know what size I was using. Normally I’d frog it and reuse the yarn for another project, but mohair. So I have a fuzzy red square forever in my stash.
a “boyfriend” aran sweater for a 300 lb now ex-husband
Sweaters. I have a few. In versions stages.
Am wondering why you decided to knit this map. And is it a blanket? A wall hanging?
My never-gonna-finish project is one I’ve never started. A blanket. A big one. Not a baby size blanket, but a large, snuggle into it when it’s -20 outside blanket. I have many ideas for this blanket in my head, but not a single stitch on my needles. What stops me? Fear of never finishing!
My first Fair Isle Sweater. I thought it would take forever, but after getting started, I was hooked. Now I have two under my belt.
Too many to mention. At the top, however has been destashing! And have a propensity for leaving one sleeve unfinished! Baah, I Lose interest
The third 8′ long strip of a blanket I’m weaving.
It was the second blanket and I was just sick of it all. It’s still on my loom, 2 years later, in a corner of my room.
My Dragonfly pullover (Norah Gaughan) has all of the hard part (the dragonfly) finished except the last 10 rows. Started and stopped in 2011. I will get to it eventually. Hope springs eternal.
Crocheting a tablecloth with knit crosheen. I started it in college sitting in the hall at my dorm chatting with friends. Stored it in a pillowcase. That pillowcase went everywhere. I completed a column of 10 blocks, then started on the second row of 10. That row never got past 1/3 finished. I kept pulling it out and putting it away. It was either a very long table runner or a …. When I hit 50, it became a “Never will I ever” project and I gifted it to Goodwill, with all the balls of knitcrosheen, the pattern booklet, hook, and the pillowcase. No regrets, ever.
I have 3/4’s of a tablecloth started in the 80’s, crocheted in DMC Cebelia size 30, done from a pattern book from the 30’s. A giant floral fillet crochet chart. Something no one is ever going to use again.
probably the pair of socks I keep talking about and even have several options of yarn for…..socks scare me.
Some day… I will finish the Little House Afghan a la Kaffe Fassett …which is resting in a large basket under the baby grand….
The looong taper on the Lustrous Shawl. Tapering by one stitch every other row is a tedious process, possibly heading for a boxed-up interval.
I’m generally fairly good about finishing a project as most are gifts. I do have 1 wip, a sweater, that just doesn’t look right that I may need to start over. Hmmmm, I also have a lace shawl that moths got to that needs mending.
Denise Bell’s spectacular Kailyard pi shawl (alpaca lace weight – 72 inches in diameter). I’ve made it to the border but it’s been on a long-term hold for other deadline knitting.
Alice Starmore sweater jacket from 1994 Vogue Knitting. So many colors & so many small tangles & I have only the corregated rib completed. Alas it is not out of date it’s a classic!
I read today’s Atlas Insider on a tiny screen so I thought for a brief moment that your map of the US project was another one of your clever, exaggerated-for-effect images. Imagine my delight after scrolling to see that your project is AN ACTUAL MAP OF THE US! I am hereby letting it be known that any ultra-ambitious knitting project I undertake now and in the future will be referred to as my “knitted map of the US” project should it ever be tossed aside to languish in the deep dark depths of my craft closet. Heck, I have a few non-knitted projects I can refer to that way right now. Thanks for the laugh! P.S. Any chance you’ll ever offer slip cases for the field guides? I just received my birthday splurge of all the guides I needed to complete my set and was thinking how lovely it would be to house them in their own cases.
Things to never finish: many years ago, before I discovered nice yarn, I started a top with a slubby acrylic yarn. The neckline was too small to fit over my head. It sat in a bag for about 25 years while I pondered what to do about it (i.e., forgot about it). I threw it away.
Hoping to win!
Hit the send button too soon.
It took me so long to collect the yarn for a temp quilt that the year was over before I started, then it was too daunting a task to knit 365 days of temps. Seemed like a good idea at the time to just record the temps and do big chunks at a time.
The Big Lebowski dude sweater …. Why am I so afraid?
I started a blanket of knitted squares 10+ years ago. Knitted about half of the squares, and then just lost the will to continue. I think the squares are still lurking in the bottom of a bin somewhere in our basement.
A blanket with numerous squares with intarsia designs. What was I thinking…I hate intarsia!
Oh DEAR !!! It could be my next project!!! I’m old—stuff happens. However if no stuff “happens” then I’ll never finish a steeked Norwegian pullover for both of my very large sons. They don’t seem to mind—big guys stay warmer than I do…
I have a lace cowl I started over 10 years ago. It’s warm where I live. I’m lucky I can wear a sweater but warm accessories aren’t needed. And lace frustrates me. I have to spend my time looking at charts.
Many years ago I started a shawl using a Herbert Niebling dolly pattern. I think I am about 100 rows in and now have no idea where the thing is
A Kaffe Fassett sweater of course! Love all those beautiful colors, hate knitting with bobbins, lots of tails hanging, etc. I gave up.
Gosh a few years ago I started a shawl…I started this particular yarn (colour of which I did not like, bought on the net, hoped for a different shade)… Just wanted to away with it. I design my own knitting… however after about a quarter of this 59g lace yarn I changed my ideas so many times and each time it meant frogging the 2nd quarter of the ball… So I am back to the drawing board…1st quarter will stay, the rest will have to be simpler, be ause somehow this yarn does not inspire me enough…
DO NOT READ ABOVE -read this corrected version instead:
Gosh, a few years ago I started a shawl… this particular yarn (colour of which I did not like, bought on the net, hoped for a different shade)… Just wanted to do away with it. I design my own knitting… however, after about a quarter of this 50g of lace yarn I changed my ideas so many times and each time it meant frogging the 2nd quarter of the ball… So I am back to the drawing board…1st quarter will stay, the rest will have to be simpler, because somehow this yarn does not inspire me enough… but I do hope to finish this…. eventually!
I started a beautiful green sweater four years ago, planning to make a simple Joji Boxy. Got as far as the shoulders and neck-it looked like I was wearing football pads. Started over with a different pattern in the leftover yarn, but then had to face frogging the Boxy. Not happening so far.
I have been daydreaming about the hexi beehive blanket for years and while I love the idea of it, stuffing all those little puffs and weaving in all those little ends and sewing it all together sucks the joy right out of me. I can see sad little piles of hexi puffs accumulating slowly and being abandoned in various corners of the house for years until I finally just offer them up in a weird and confounding post in my Buy Nothing group.
A sweater with a leaf motif across the shoulders was started. I measured throughout. When I finished I blocked it ….well the whole think stretched. This 5’2” woman would have to have grown to 6’. The sleeve length was perfect for a long-armed gorilla. BUT I was determined to finish it. I unraveled the whole thing and started again. I have finished the body, but I just can’t face doing the sleeves…and THERE IT SITS FOR YEARS.
Thought you were kidding
Want to see this if it ever gets finished
My biggest challenge was a combination of projects…I had started 3 different shawls over a 10 year span and abandoned each of them for various reasons. During the first year of the pandemic, I re-examined each one and figured out why I had paused in their progress…by consulting the designer of one, getting help from a friend who had knit the same pattern for another, and focusing on a friend who was terminally ill and had requested a shawl. I finished all of them within months and felt a huge sense of accomplishment and peace. The last shawl found its way through the mail to my dying friend and comforted both of us in her last months.
I have a shawl that’s been languishing. Whyyyy? I hit a roadblock, need to think about how to handle, put it away and there it sits. For years…. In fact now that I think about it, that’s how all my wips become ufos.
Never gonna finish it project? That one is easy. Even though I keep trying to make headway, it’s working my way through the stash. I started to make a dent last month with a favorite yarn, selected three projects and guess what I had to do to work on them? Buy more yarn, of course. Hello squishy mail.
I don’t have an unending project
At the moment it’s a vest for my husband which will require steering and a zipper, both new experiences for me. So as long as I don’t finish it, I can avoid both of those panics!
I started The Twigs sweater a few years ago. I can feel it glaring at me from it’s storage bin.
And I seriously thought you were joking at first about the map.
I have an Alice Starmore fair isle sweater kit that has the bottom ribbing done and is stalled. It is over 25 years old…….I will never finish it but can’t seem to part with it…..oh well
I usually finish all projects, but inherited a baby afghan that isn’t finished from my mother in law. Don’t know that I’ll ever get it finished.
a floor pouf, third time is a charm
My never finished project? A baby hat. Not difficult but a poorly written pattern means it’s sitting needed to be unravelled and started again. Sorry hat. I’ve moved on.
I bought yarn years ago for Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Green Sweater. I think the time for knitting it is past, but the yarn was specially spun, yada yada. I haven’t even started it. I once knit a Japanese pattern, Am Kamin, twice (there was an unfortunate f*lting accident).
I would say the second sock, but I never finished the first sock.
I began a cardigan in the 80s in Shetland wool, oatmeal and turquoise. It has an all-over pattern with a very, very long repeat, something like 30 stitches. The Otis flips in the middle, both vertically and horizontally, and perhaps for this reason, it’s Impossible for me to memorize. The back and fronts and done, checking the pattern every five or six stitches throughout. E pieces are sewn together. The double breasted button and buttonhole bands in tiny cables are done and attached and I think the neckband too. I started down one sleeve and then I stopped. I considered plain ss sleeves, but no. I see it on a shelf in ziploc and clear tote. There’s enough yarn to continue — but I don’t. I’ve pulled it out a few times, but that’s as far as I get.
I have Shetland yarn for several sweaters, but I’ve never gone there again.
I finally picked up a lace weight brioche scarf that has been languishing since 2019. This is the year!
A Kiki Mariko rug I started in the aughts. I’m 3/4 done, and I will not give up! It just might take a while. . .longer.
a seed stitch baby blanket in multicolored cotton yarn on size 7 needles. I know I’m never gonna finish it because A- I don’t particularly like knitting with cotton yarn B- I don’t like knitting a blanket in seed stitch on size 7 needles C- the kid was gonna be in college by the time I finished it! I discovered these things only after I started knitting it. It was hastily shoved into a plastic bag about a quarter of the way through, and gifted to a Goodwill. I hope it finds it’s way into the hands of someone who will be overjoyed in the making of a project like that!
Soooo, my mom left behind a partly-knit sweater the color of her light blue eyes. I asked my sister-in-law to knit it done, and she made a beautiful lacey sweater, but it’s too scratchy to wear. I want to unknit and reknit it…trying to decide how I can display the beautiful work without being miserable with it touching my skin. Ideas???
Have it professionally blocked and mounted in a shadow box. A lovely memory of your mother and sister-in-law that won’t make you itch.
I love Stephen West shawl patterns. But they are always in danger of not getting finished. The only reason they do (so far) is thanks to his patient tutorials, I think. There is also a blanket in my mind that I haven’t even started because I probably would never finish it!
I am so ashamed to say this, but socks for my mother.
The I Will Build a Farm cross-stitch that was to be framed for my young son’s room. He will be 54 this summer. It is so near done, I cannot toss it.
My goodness! I made one of those, from a Woman’s Day pattern. Mine is all stitched, but folded in a box somewhere, never framed. My kids will are 55 and 56.
My other “never gonna” is a granny square blanket from 3” grannies, begun about 20 years ago. It won’t be finished, because I threw all 100 or so squares in the trash about 5 years ago.
my never quite finished project is a green and pink butterfly afgan(ie) made in 1971 for my mother, what was I thinking she hates green only decorates with blue. finished the pattern with 40 bobbles in tunishan crochet, but only got half the ends woven in. Found it in my basement now and still fringy on the back side.
Oh dear I don’t have one. Last year I belonged to a knit it fit it frog it MAL and I got rid of all my unfinished projects. Felt great. And I have already frogged another sweater since. Don’t worry it is becoming a lovely Hirne by Kate Davis.
An alligator blanket with a TON of bobbles.
The sweater I’m currently trying to finish. No matter how many hours I spend on the second sleeve, I am always about three inches from the ribbing. I am sick of stockinette in the round!
I’m always putting my sweater projects in timeout to do a shawl or Cowl I finish them eventually.
I have two thoughts about your knitted map/blanket my first thought was WHY?!!!! My second one was that’s going g to be so beautiful when it’s done!
I’m very excited for my Field Guide subscription to hit my mail box it’s the first time I’ve ordered, if I’m lucky enough to win I’ll give it to my sister.
Completing a temperature blanket for everyone in my family using their birth year as the guide…. that’s 18 blankets! Yikes!!!!!!
A double knitted afghan that I never started. Luckily I made a double knitted pair of mittens first. The mittens are warm but we’re tedious to knit. Knitting should be fun not torturous.
I have a stitch sampler blanket made up of 256 4” squares, double sided. It was what got me started knitting, but it wasn’t long before other patterns caught my eye and my will power to finish one project before starting another was broken, probably forever!
LOLs a towel… a big, fuzzy, knit-in-cotton, towel. Why when you can buy them. Insanity does run in my family…
So many wips! I don’t know if I will ever finish the gloves started 20+ years ago, or the afghan started 15 years ago, or …..
There’s a beautiful, baby alpaca, full length “ bed jacket “ ( more like house coat) full of lace stitches and shaping that I spent sooo many hours on during my daughter’s teenage years. My ambition, as a rather new knitter, was more impressive than my skills. I may just frog the thing and make a simple sweater of it. My daughter is now 30:)
I like dragons and I saw a shawl pattern with a lovely huge dragon design. I thought it would look great as a wall hanging. I got the pattern, I got the yarn. After a while (maybe a few years!) I realized that I don’t like to knit lace. My dragon will never be.
mine was a top that i decided not to do a gauge swatch for. the fabric could be used for pot holders it was so thick and not flattering at all. i loved the colors though!
I have a humongous blanket going on, all grey, made in long (looooooooooong) strips in different pattern stitches. The strips get unweildy for car knitting or even sitting in a cozy chair knitting. I think I have fallen out of love with it and I’m going to need to rethink my made up idea of a blanket made in strips. But i’ll keep it in hibernation and think on it some more…..forever….and ever….
What isn’t finished? There is the east garter stripe blanket from beginning of Covid, that I don’t finish because it’s too boring. The scarf from a nifty set of yarns where you use every type of yarn in the line (I got sooo far! Then a section I didn’t like/understand and rather then go further…). The hat where I ran out of yarn right close to the end, subbed a couple of stripes of the wrong size and color yarn, and yeah. That hat is never getting finished or worn. Then there are three or four projects finished! But. Not all the ends are woven in or the real issue- not blocked. Whoops. There are a lot finished. But oh, the unfinished, that doesn’t call out to me, rather they clutter. Oh, the clutter. Maybe I will go organize them. Again.
Lord God. You are so past needing an intervention on this project. I never give up that being said this might be an opportunity. Sent with all the loving kindness I can muster.
Oh, THANK YOU for such a delightful post this morning! It’s good to laugh – the truth hits so close to home. All my projects are unfinished. Kites blanket? Blanket for my dad who died in 2008? Poncho started last Winter Olympics? Top 3 without even starting to think about the question seriously.
Yikes – this reminded me of socks I started for the winter Olympics two times back! They were a kit in red white and blue, I’d only made socks once before, and the pattern was cabled. I did a gauge swatch which matched in st st, but the first sock with cables was way too small. I never made it from the top down to the heel… but maybe I can redo it for the next Olympics (not this year).
So many…. It is satisfying to repurpose and find the one true destiny for the yarn…
Or for some face reality & donate the yarn….
The worst was probably a jacket out of a thick yarn, 35 yd/ ball, Not something a gal who is not exactly thin should wear! Not sure this yarn will make it as a blanket either….
My most challenging WIP is a stranded Jane Thornley vest in Handmaiden silk. Adapted to knit in the round, I’m up to the armholes and stuck. I have to do the math and decide where to place the next set of motifs but my tension looks bad. I should just steam it to see if it will block out ok, then if yes, get on with it. The yarn is so gorgeous! The pattern is so hard!
A vest. Because it had no sleeves. When I was a noob knitter. For a friend. Who has finally finally learned not to ask when it will be done. I am thinking of ritual immolation for the project. I am not joking.
A red cashmere shawl. Beautiful pattern, beautiful yarn, No motivation!
My ‘never going to finish’ project is a hooded baby sweater called Sweet Pea Cardigan. I started this before the baby was born, and now she is nine years old. Yikes! The pattern is from the book 60 Quick Baby Knits. Apparently, I’m not quick enough.
A Dale of Norway Nagano Olympics sweater.
I just had to make a shawl for myself. Well, I did complete the shawl but never wore it so finally after sitting in my closet for years unraveled it and have been using the yarn for socks. Many pairs of socks with yarn to spare.
For some reason I have been able to finish the blankets that I’ve started and I am on square 16 of the last strip of color explosion. However, I have four, yes 4 beautiful lace sweaters in silks, cottons and beaded Artyarns each knit to the armholes or above. Then I realize that as I relax into lace knitting my gauge changes and the sweaters are too big, the arm holes are too long and I can’t figure out how to change the measurements or I have lost the pattern… not kidding! I have been able to knit beautiful shawls and scarves out of the same kinds of yarn and finished them. But the sweaters? One of them I think is 6 or 7 years old…
We all have such things behind something….you are in good company!
Beaded half gloves!
I have some unfinished KAL projects crying out for completion.
An embroidered and quilted street map of New Orleans, begun in 2018 (?) in a flush of enthusiasm over the city’s 300th anniversary. It mocks me from it’s bin in the corner….
A peach and white mohair intarsia cardigan knit flat in pieces. I started it back in the 80s. Only has one sleeve left. Will never finish. Peach is no longer a color in my wardrobe repertoire. And the style is beyond dated. But also never frogged because – mohair. I still look at it once in awhile and consider repurposing the yarn and yet there it stays. Likely in perpetuity.
Fall, 1992 Vogue Knitting magazine DKNY Enchanted Aryan Forest sweater. Could never get gauge. I unpack and worship it from time to time.
The comments here are amazing.
I find I don’t have the strength today to think about all the things that will never be finished.
During pandemic I have finished a blanket that took 17 years. And a sweater – my first! – that took 9 years. I have used them both a LOT since finishing.
At the moment, it’s a simple seed stitch blanket in dk… it’s never ending
I e gone on an anthology hat kick and it’s a delightful fast little project that uses up lots of little left over yarn. Just the exact opposite of a grey scale map of the US in yarn.
A single bed sized ripple stitch blanket for my daughter. Worked in one piece.
After I first learned to knit, I started a blanket for my son, which was bigger than a baby blanket because he was six. It wasn’t very pretty because I was new to knitting. Now he is 30. Blanket still in progress…
I started a beautiful basket weave patterned baby blanket in rosy pink for my son’s girlfriend’s niece. The baby was over 9 lbs and my blanket was too small, so I sent for more yarn to make it bigger. Son and girlfriend broke up before that blanket was done, so I kept it to give another baby. The next 5 babies born in my circle of friends were all boys, so I still have the blanket. And it’s still not done….lol
Any fair isle project that I have started I have never finished. Love the look just can’t stay the course.
Pearman. A Jean Moss t-shirt in cotton glacé. Lots of colors and textures at the same time!
A younger and more ambitious me started a Mitered Square Blanket. I still keep my leftover yarn and add it to the gigantic pile. It’s never gonna happen ♀️
A sweater begun in the one year I lived in a snowy climate – 30 years ago.
I’ve had a rose window shawl in progress in the bottom of my WIP box for oh, five years? Handspun gradient yarn. It’ll be spectacular if I ever dig it out again. Sigh.
A baby blanket that nearly killed me but was gorgeous! Another WIP here I come …..
You’ll finish your project! Good luck.
I am closing in on finishing a pair of blankets based on a painting by my son-in-law’s late father – a merging of the creativity of the two families. 10 colors, hundreds of color changes and ends, massive tangles – it has been an intense project made do-able by staying at home during covid. What has helped recently is consistently doing just 5 rows a day – the end is in sight!!!
There’s this cardigan. It’s in a ziploc gallon size baggy. I got to the pockets and there I stopped. It’s a small cardigan meant for a two year old granddaughter. She’s away at university.
My first tshirt that I mostly frogged about 4 times after the whole body was done, once when I’d finished a sleeve, and then just chucked the whole thing and now I have a 2lb ball of misti alpaca tonos silk wound into a gigantic ball stuffed at the bottom of a project bag under half of a weighted blanket I started in 2020 (and also haven’t finished)
Rainbow Jacket by Vivian Høxbro. It’s not even an official WIP because I never got a kit or collected the yarn, but it’s an intentional WIP.
Another fantastic post DG, I’m amazed that you’re doing this and I wish you all the best!
A double-knitted scarf. Gorgeous, but very time intensive and attention demanding. If I ever do finish, it will be quite an accomplishment!
The final table runner out of 5 on a warp. I knew I shouldn’t have taken the first 4 off! And i also see why I knit… much more portable!!
Marie Wallin cardigan. Of course I HAD to convert a knitted-flat fair isle cardigan to knitted in the round with steeks. All good, until the sleeves. What about the sleeves???
Not knitting but cross stitch, bought when we took our daughter to check out colleges, I finally finished it and she was 40.!
When I read knitted map of United States I thought it was just a far out example of the actual type of project you had selected. Nope! The bane of my knitting world has been a gansey that has had the shoulder strap/ sleeves ripped apart … well, stopped counting at … six times.
A mitered square blanket of leftover sock yarn, but with the colours artistically grouped, not just random. I was gifted a bankers box of leftovers. It takes me1.5 hours per square
Dissent is my stalled project. =(
I think we should all pass our projects around, I would knit the second socks and do a sleeve or two!
Endless Noro garter stitch blanket started in 2020.
I had a never-gonna-finish-it project…but then covid struck and I got way more knitting time, and strangely enough, I finished it! It was a stripped couch-size blanket, and became super boring the more I knit it. It was a wip for close to 10 years! So I figure, if I can finish that, then I can finish most anything!
I will never finish the Crazed Scandinavian Cowl. I can’t get past the provisional cast on, in the round with fingering yarn, although I have tried multiple times. I’m now trying to decide who to leave it to in my will.
Oh no! I just started my Crazed Scandinavian Cowl this week. I got the pattern and the yarn last year but never started because I had too much going on at the time. I thought I should try again this winter. The provisional cast on is ok to do but the stockinette curling is bugging me. A lot of pattern knitting and all I get to see is the backside that is curled up. I think I am getting to the point where it will stop curling and I can enjoy seeing the pattern. I am looking forward to knitting the patterns but no way will I need to knit the long version.
I did a melanie berg scarf named Whiteout that had a lot of lace work. It took me a 2 years to finish but I finally did!
I might have an Alice Starmore cardigan I started in 2009. But the real mother of all unfinished knitting projects is as yet UNSTARTED: Kaffe’s Kilim Jacket in original yarns. Collected in the late 1990s and sitting in a box since. I just need to decide how to adapt it to fit my 5′ 1″ self then it will only take 10 years to actually knit.
The heart blanket from Noro and the Dreambird Shawl. But who knows, never say never
The 64 crayons blanket I started 9 years ago. Wasn’t paying attention to length of strips and they are all different lengths. Might as well give them away as scarves at this point!
A 2000 yd center out lace shawl in a hand dyed gradient lace yarn in a salmon color that’s way too bright….
I have been working on Knit Beginner Blanket and I’m also learning how to use a swift, ugh! The reason the blanket may never get finished is because I keep getting my yarn messed up trying to use the swift and ball winder. I end up with a tangled mess which I have to discard and reorder another skein. I’m hopeless…
DG Strong you are such an inspiration and I love your letters that always make me smile and giggle.
My never ever project is a Coco Knit sweater that I started to use up stash during the pandemic. Unfortunately the overflowing box of yarn wasn’t enough to finish said sweater and of course the dye lot of yarn is no longer around. I spent money on more yarn but it may not work so I stopped working on the sweater just in case. Now I just carry the huge project bag around to remind me I may have created an albatross. Thank You for reminding me about the big orange bag.
I will never finish a quilt-like afghan I started several years ago. I made each of the pieces, but just don’t like them well-enough to knit them together. I’m thinking of it as a learning project. I learned several new knitting stitches and I learned that I didn’t like the yarn.
A 10 stitch blanket for every grandkid!! Everytime I think I might get there I am gifted with another grandchild!!
My most challenging project was duplicating a sweater seen on IG of a pastural scene complete with sheep for my daughter. I knitted the design freehand from the top down and in the round. Knitting The intarsia portion in the top part upside down was a bit mind boggling. I ended by stopping at the sleeve separation and knitting bottom up and then grafting everything together. In the end it was actually very satisfying. If you like You can see it on my grid on IG, @gail_force_1
It’s stunning!
My never gonna finish is probably the lace shawl I started in a class, which has since been munched on by carpet beetles, so now has holes. Sad.
A fingering weight sweater… I finally finished knitting but am uninspired to weave in the ends, find buttons, etc
Haven’t actually started it, but have been constantly thinking about the Safe at Home blanket ever since I saw it on Ravelry. I’m telling myself I’m in the scraps gathering stage, but I’m not sure I’ll ever gather enough to start
I knitted a map of the world sweater from a Vogue Knitting magazine! My daughter’s Social Studies teacher loved it, of course. It was like a cross between knitting and counted cross stitch.
A knitted Sudoku puzzle blanket where each number was represented by an eight inch square of different textural patterns. And there were multiple sudoku puzzles that made up the blanket and lots of different colors. One of those plans that sounds like fun on paper, but once you start it becomes a nightmare if one has a short attention span 😀
Lime green mohair coat. Knit 3/4 and realized I am allergic to mohair. Looking back, the lime green was likely also a mistake.
I have, squirreled away, the full length (as in to the floor) Kaffe Courthouse Steps sweater. It is huge and beautiful except for weaving in in roughly 10 million ends and figuring out how to sew on the collar, which is itself already knitted. Every so often I pull it out of its huge storage bin and admire it and think about how it’s almost done but then I remember I still don’t understand how to get the collar on.
It’s been languishing for over 20 years.
My queen size sock yarn blanket. When I started I ambitiously figured it would take me 5 years. It’s already way more than 5 years, so now I’m planning on finishing it by the time my granddaughter gets married. She’s 11 so that gives me some time……
My maybe never gonna finish project would be the Ashby Shawl – https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/ashby – which i fell in love with at a yarn store as more of a beginner knitter. I bought yarn for it and cast on and then became a little hung up by the charts and the complex stitches. Or so they seemed to me at that time. Maybe this is the year I pull it back out and cast on again?
I think I bought the yarn and pattern probably in 2007. . .
I have a project from a Knitters magazine from the 1980s that is mostly black. Now in my 60’s, there isn’t enough light shining for me to be able to see my way through knitting a black sweater.
Tree of Life Afghan.
What in the world were you smoking when you decided that was a good idea?
I once decided I was skilled enough to rewrite a Rowan cabled vest pattern so I could knit it in the round and steek it, because that sounded easier. I ended up with a sweater that would fit a small dog. Still now sure how I didn’t figure out it was too small until I was about twelve inches along.
Last weekend I took a good hard look at my WIPs pile and dismissed my “never gonna finish it” projects from service. Honestly? It was freeing! Included in the dug-out-of-oblivion pile was a pair of socks that just need to be kitchener’d (why oh why did I stop so short of the finish line there??) and a shawl that only needs a lovely lace edge added to it. Those stayed… the rest went right out the door without any guilt about the yarn or the time invested. I learned from all those projects and that’s good enough for me.
Chifforobe—haven’t heard that word since the 50s! Oh, my! My big, but very gratifying project, has been the. Googly Eyed Gator blanket. Pattern is in the 60 Quick Baby Blankets book. Fun intarsia project, but certainly not Quick.
I have so many sweater UFOs that need just a sleeve or a collar or a hem. What is wrong with me? Test knitting has been good for me, because- deadlines! Never had so many FOs as during this @#$& pandemic when I really got into test knitting.
I’d love to test or sample knit something for MDK.
The Daytripper. I usually go to bed with the chickens, but was up till past midnight last night working on the yoke. I can’t wait to see it finished.
I’m not holding out a lot of hope for my Bang-out-a-Daytripper. It’s already the 6th and I finally picked my colours and finished swatching last night. If I don’t finish it in February, I’m hoping for the end of March. Just in time for the weather to be too warm to wear it.
Give me some sympathy. This Friday I’m having thumb joint surgery (probably from knitting too much) and can’t knit for three months. You heard me. Three months! Considering learning to crochet. “She leaves behind a partially completed Shift Cowl”.
My first attempt at knitting after not knitting for many years was a pair of socks. Thankfully, I had a patient teacher! I had learned as a child to ‘throw’, but it was awkward for me, so the weekend before my class I taught myself to continental knit. Much easier for me!
The christening gown for my first born. I bought merino/silk roving to spin the yarn, to knit the robe.
That baby is having a baby of his own in May. Fiber in stash – still unspun.
A 6ft square lace canopy for my son’s wedding. I finished it, but he is now divorced.
oh my goodness gracious & stars and garters, D.G. I thought you were joking when you wrote “knitted map of the USA”. My forever project was (is) an apricot cabled cardigan in Caitlin Cotton (remember that yarn?) I think I started it in 1992 when I was 40 lbs lighter and was in an orange phase. And I dislike knitting with cotton . . .
most ambitious project: a tunic out of 3 shades of linen fingering yarn, with yoke and body in 2 different lace patterns. came out great but have only worn it once. need to show it off!
I have 2 sweaters one is a test knit that I did as a group class and one is a one piece sweater vest type thing. I’m not a fast knitter and although I can easily sequence knit and follow directions things for both these sweater vests went on and on and on. I seemed to never complete any piece. I finally had to stop and tackle something I could finish quickly for the satisfaction of completion. You know you’re in trouble when you buy yarn and your husband begins to ask; “What have you finished? You’re constantly knitting. You must have finished something.” All I could do is show partial backs and a side. I’m a larger person so things just take longer. On the plus side (no pun intended), I have finished a hat and learned a new technique (Magic Loop). Now, I can revisit those sweaters.
I keep thinking about the Kites Throw and remain stalled there. Trouble is, all I’ve done so far is think about it. Maybe when life normalizes a little more . . .
I am usually pretty good about finishing gifts for family and friends but I have a baby sweater for my niece who is turning 3 this year and I started knitting it for during the baby shower but the seaming is never right and it’s been in time out more then once!!!
So many wonderful comments and so many UFOS. I have a scarf that is frogged at the moment, because I lost interest when each section had a different pattern and some patterns were “better” than others.
It took five years, but I finished it-My sister’s Alice Starmore Inishmaan sweater in Cotton Fleece. I had to make up another size. And the seaming together was totally stymying!
I’m working on it! A stranded colorwork tee in fingering yarn from my stash. Knitted from the top down, yoked and I’m now worried about running out of some of my colors. I’ve loved every minute of it, and I hope the “experts” are right that most of the bumpiness blocks out!
That second sock . . .
Just a few (???) unfinished projects…a shawl where I didn’t really like the yarn color when it arrived…half done…and a 2-way vest for my stepmom where it’s taking way more time to knit than I thought…3/4 done.
Before I learned to knit, I started a crocheted temperature blanket. Using squares. 2 color squares. Plus another mumble-hundred solid squares for spacing, because of how I wanted to arrange said squares.
Yeah, that’s never getting finished. In part because I don’t remember what year it was for!
I have about 35 squares knitted in as many different patterns with relative ignorance of the importance of gauge and effect of texture on the final product. Not at all sure if and how they can be seamed together to make a blanket. Yet I refuse to start over. Perhaps it will remain undone or I will lay caution to the wind and just seam them together and see what comes of it!
I have a sweater that I started for my husband that must be 20 yrs hidden away! It makes my head hurt to just think about figuring out where I am in it and picking it back up. So…off I go to other projects! 🙂
Two years ago I started a blanket made up of puffy hexagons to use up scraps of yarn. I now have 7 out of the 384 I will need.
One of Kay’s Scowls, which was meant to be a gift (Christmas 2011) for my stepdaughter. Finally got buttons for it the following July, but it still was just All Wrong. Frogged, and had another go, but no joy. Found the bag the other day. She’s still waiting…
A complex lace shawl that I started in 2019 to wear at my son’s 2020 wedding. Even after the big event was postponed in favor of a small backyard covid-appropriate ceremony, I kept working on it until I realized there was no way I could finish it in time, at which point I stopped. In the middle of a row, I think.
I haven’t started it yet. I have plenty of books with ideas. Just making up my mind is the problem. I really need another book to help me decide.
I have (had) ambitions to finish what I hoped would be a beautiful lace scarf, with beads sprinkled in for an extra oomph! The combo of uber thin yarn and the patience required to see the thing through have destined this WIP to a small forgotten corner of my yarn closet. Sigh.
I have enjoyed reading these comments. My project is a monthly yarn club blanket. I’m about 14 months behind, and counting. I must say it has lots of company.
Almost every project I start has the potential to never be finished – I hate weaving in ends and blocking. But I’m fantasizing about Star-Eyed Julep Throw – it combines my love of log-cabin quilts and warm, snuggly afghans. For now I’m purchasing a used copy of the book and dreaming about possible color combinations for my blue/burgundy decorating scheme.
I started a blanket that had tiny wedges, and those led into more wedges, and wedges. Those were in strips that you then had to seam. So many ends. Still sleeping in a baggie that I look at once a year.
“Knitivity” by Fiona Goble. I have the book, carefully selected the yarn, and so far (in five years) three naked figures and part of a dress for Mary. When I come across it I sigh and then pretend I didn’t see it.
Full-length curtains. Lace-weight.
I have a little bag of pieces made for the Beekeepers Quilt. Who knows if it will ever be finished.
I may never finish a particular pair of socks… unless I find someone with long, thin feet, as this pair is too large for me.
Sweater is started for my 20 year college reunion. Maybe I’ll finish for my 30- year reunion in a couple of years?
I have a granny square baby blanket started for my son’s third grade teacher when she announced she was pregnant. So far it’s been 13 years since I’ve added a stitch, but it’s too pretty to frog.
A teale pull over. Love, love the color and pattern! But I started it 30 years and 4 sizes ago…….
These days when I knit for myself, I stick to socks! 🙂
My most ambitious project so far in this lifetime was a Bearpaw intarsia baby blanket (not exactly small). Ten thousand loose ends to deal with on the so-called “wrong side”. Fiddley little points to pick up along and knit around, etc. Beautiful when done, however. (I burned the pattern to prevent delusional attempts to make another one.)
My stockinette poncho because I get bored & distracted by other more interesting knits….
Somewhere in a closet I have a Kaffe Fassett sweater kit…I think it’s called The Four Seasons. It’s a cardigan, four figures of women, done in intarsia. What was I thinking?! And it might even be in cotton!
Something using 4 colors of cotton yarn. I love the colors… but keep ripping out what I start. Currently making a swifter cover… but I don’t own a swifter and will likely rip it out too. I should just ballband dishcloth it and be done with it
The teeny tiny hats and scarfs for the felted snowmen I made for my sister ‘some’ years ago
For me it was a first-garment kind of project, a “simple” vest. I got stuck, didn’t understand the directions, and couldn’t show it to anyone because we were in the pandemic. After reading the project notes of others for clues, and watching YouTube how tos, I was still stuck, and not enjoying it at all. I finally put the stitches on waste yarn and buried the thing in my stash…probably should frog it one of these days.
I’ve made many other things since then that I love, but I can relate to sometimes feeling like “la la la, knitting – what’s that?”
I took a friend up on a dare once. Make him a King Size afghan, on a deadline. At the time I thought I was crazy, but looking back totally manageable. And he loved it!
Carol Feller’s Twining Wrap from Field Guide 14! I was going along and then March 2020 happened. Needed smaller projects.
Will get back to it one day!
Soon after I started knitting (almost 40 years ago!) I bought cheap yarn for an in-between-projects project – an afghan done in strips. I have 5 of 7 strips done…
I have a King-sized blanket started that is knit from my handspun. There are no variegated yarns in it, only solids or semi solids and it’s beautiful, but it sits in its own basket waiting. it needs about two more feet to be usable and to be honest, I just don’t know when I will be able to spin more solids….
A heathered greyish blue alpaca vest. I just don’t like it. Don’t like the color or pattern I chose. Actually, writing this down had made me one step closer to frogging the whole thing! Thank you, MDK!
Fair Isle, of course! Knit Picks Dogwood Sweater. Started it SO long ago, I’m sure I wear a bigger size now. Have tried to convince myself that I can make a vest instead. Oh – and I bought the kit in BOTH colorways, so there is a whole ‘nother sweaterI haven’t even started.
I hope someday to finish my Bohus Blue Shimmer cardigan. The yoke is done but I’ve restarted the sleeves twice because they are too big. I last remember knitting a sleeve in 2004 while at the New Zealand Congress on Coloured Sheep. My knitting gauge seems to be tighter these days, so there is hope.
I thought you were joking about the knitted map!
Dewdrop pillow- beaded lace chevrons. Size 3 needles. Frogged its cousin, Patchwork Hearts (beaded intarsia) years ago.
Briza tank top. Almost finished it 10 pounds ago. Catastrophic loss of confidence at the end. But enough yarn to do the next size up.
I did not think I would ever be able to finish a grown-up sized blanket, but I did this past December! Wild surprise.
placemats for Vickie
Haha…I thought you were kidding when you said you were knitting a map of the US! I’m sure you’ll be able to finish that up before the field guide needs to be mailed out:)
I, too, have the pieces for a baby blanket started for my son. From many of Barbara Walker’s mosaic patterns, including the letters of his name. He is now 56.
The Persion Dreams hexagon blanket is my never going to be finished project. So far I have completed 11 hexagons. I’m maybe about half way there. Started it over a year ago. Love doing them, but…..I love doing so many other things too.
Probably my biggest “never gonna finish it” project is a large, mistake rib stole out of heavenly cashmere that I am working on as we “speak”. It is sooooo boring, smallish needles, 130-ish stitches wide. And I even joined the Finish It February group on Ravelry, but I keep getting distracted, such as to read blogs like this and to listen to podcasts.
I am so afraid Ill never finish a gorgeous soft grey vest I started for myself years ago. I put it aside to make some gifts and forgot where I was exactly on it, and now, my knitting is soooo much better! I can’t decide whether to keep at it and Hope it will come out okay or to rip it out and start again.
I never thought I’d finish a sweater I started 6 years ago. I took numerous classes on ways to keep track of the 3 cable charts & took it all over the country thinking I’d work on it there. At the first MDK Shakerag retreat, I brought it because it had a miscrossed cable. The fabulous Julia Farwell-Clay fixed my mistake. I can’t even find the fix! Last winter I finally finished it! It’s super warm & cozy which has come in handy this winter season!
A gansey sweater for my EX husband.
A felted messenger bag. Got the pattern when I first started knitting and didn’t realize how much knitting it entailed. I eventually donated the pattern.
When I was a kid my Mom taught me to knit. When I was maybe about 10, I started a bright, bright sweater in many colors. This was the late 60’s so you can imagine how bright. Well, my skills weren’t up to all that. Some time much later I realized the project had just disappeared. Mom must have decided to save me from it.
There’s the Kaffe Fassett sweater I started enthusiastically in the 1980’s….my then-boyfriend, later husband, who subsequently moved on to Eternal Life 10-years ago—he was very excited about watching my progress. The other contender is the baby sweater I started for my first niece, who is now over 40……I picked it up again while pregnant with my first daughter, now over 30.
My first pair of socks—of course I only knitted one. Also a bright pink sweater is still on sleeve island 2 years after starting it
An elegant black lace shawl that I’ve ripped out and re-started and lost my way on countless times. It languishes in the depths of the basement cupboard. I don’t know why I can’t give it away…
I think my never gonna finish it project is a sweater for myself. Maybe even socks. Every year socks go on my to do list and then they don’t happen. Too many projects to make for others. Oh well, I am having fun.
A mitered square blanket, made entirely of leftover bits of yarn, which allows me to lie to myself that the reason it’ll never(ish) get done is because OBVIOUSLY I have to wait for there to be leftover scraps from this current project or that one.
Whattaya mean you saw all the bobbins and tiny balls of yarn in the leftover drawer? You’re imagining things.
Never gonna finish that Cowichan style cardigan for husband. Sigh.
Tunisian 10 stitch using scraps of fingering weight yarn. It’s about 24 inches square. I’ve been working on it for about 5 years!
An intarsia cotton shopping bag.
I keep having ideas about combing knitting and handweaving, but I never seem to figure that out.
I had a project like that not so long ago. It was an intarsia afghan of the New York City skyline and I was relatively new to the technique. I never thought I was going to finish it but then my aunt, who used to take me to New York for visits as a kid, passed away and I was determined to finish it as a tribute to her. I’m happy to say that I achieved that goal.
An Alice Starmore St. Brigid that’s been on the needles since 2002. You’d think after 20 years I would know for a fact that I will never finish it, but apparently not.
I make it a point never to start ambitious projects: I still have a partial afghan started by my grandmother and my mother on teeny tiny needles.
A counter pane in 40 skeins of cream colored acrylic. I recently admitted to myself, “This is never happening.”
4 Christmas stockings between August and Christmas. I did it, but UGH.
A sweater with yarn I don’t love. Therefore it just sits in the project bag. Sometimes trying to save money by not buying the recommended speedy yarn and using stash isn’t the best idea. I’ll never finish it.
A baby blanket I started for my son…I got 3/4 of the way through and became convinced I didn’t have enough yarn to finish. Couldn’t manifest the energy to go get more. He’s now a freshman in college, and that particular yarn company closed down 4 years ago.
My Swedish Bohus sweater. The yarn is fabulous but I think I am using size 2 needles. It’s been in my stash at least 15 years.
I am so sad. I cannot subscribe to the field guides just because I live in Scotland…..home of all sorts of yarny goodness. I love the field guides. I have bought every one of them via the email wonders of tranference from your computer to mine. Why no electronic subscription? please tell me why Oh holders or the sacred rings of magic loopiness! Love, Alison x
A lace weight shawl in the exact same color as my knitting needles. Before I really new how to read my knitting so it had tons of mistakes in the 5 inches that I got done in 2 years! Frogged it years ago and the yarn is still waiting for what it wants to be.
Kaffe Fassett Jaunty Weave pillow cushion. I just couldn’t get the tension right from the stripe squares vs the solid squares! Thinking I might do a weather piece with all that Rowan Felted Tweed.
Oh my gosh…I started a sweater in the Bush administration. It’s a pretty thing- simple, but I decided to make it in black sock yarn. I still have a sleeve to go before I can wear it. That is my never finished project.
I have a sweater that only needs half of a sleeve and a button band to be finished, but as I was working on it I realized that I don’t like the color of the yarn…….
I do not remember why I have some beautifully knitted pieces probably for a sweater that someone gave up on. Beautiful and intricate cables in a firm gauge knitted with a very nice wooly yarn that was coal black. No needles and no pattern but a heck of a lot of knitting. Maybe I thought I could rescue the lovely knitting. I could not bear to frog it but I don’t think I want to knit with coal black yarn at this stage of my life. I probably have had it for close to 45 years. It sits in the bottom of my hope chest. Remember hope chests? I guess hope springs eternal as long as it live there.
mine is a temperature blanket – with one row for high and one for low, and king-sized. lol
A sweater I started 50 pounds ago in a yarn that has been discontinued
I started my first sweater (for myself). Since then my granddaughter asked for a throw for her birthday, then other granddaughter (her sister) wanted one for her birthday, then my daughter-in-law asked for a neutral cowl to keep warm at work. Then my oldest grandson asked for another quilt for his bed…naturally my sweater took a backseat to those sweet requests. Now, I’m thinking my youngest grandson needs a soft knitted bear for his first birthday!
A double knit scarf. So tedious but I love it.
A lovely fair isle sweater in autumn colors-many many autumn colors.
My ‘biggie’ is a 42×57″ blanket in fingering weight cotton called Embossed Triangles Blanket from Purl Soho. It will be using the entirety (nearly) of a cone of 2789 yards on US 2.5 needles. At least there are no ends to weave in!
I have a Sand Waves poncho that will take forever to finish. I get it out every few months and work a few inches.
My first steeked colorwork sweater, a Dale pattern. I knit and steeked the whole thing and just did not like the sweater. I held onto it for decades and one day a friend wanted to commission some knitted taxidermy from Sweaty Taxidermy, “I have the colorful sweater you need!” She got a deer head and a turtle out of that sweater.
A Deschain pullover for a friend. Got the body done, but seaming the shoulders proved too much for me. Turns out that holding a sewing needle plays havoc with my arthritic hands these days. I told myself I’d just do a couple stitches a day. Never happened. Then my friend lost a ton of weight. She looks fabulous and now I’m glad I procrastinated. xD
A tale as old as time, got engaged, started beautiful knitted scarf in his team’s colors. Broke up, Never going to finish that scarf unless it’s for someone else. I’m not feeling like that either!
Hi DG, I love your columns.They make me laugh! Good luck with your blanket? Wall art? Will be wonderful!
My most ambitious project was started back in the 1990’s when I was still a relatively new knitter. I believe it was from a Knitter’s Magazine. A Celtic motif intarsia knitted sweater. I gathered all the yarn; many small balls of merino in umpteen colors. I think I did start it. It is in a bag somewhere behind the chiffarobe! Back then I could have happily worn it. Now just the thought of a crew neck wool sweater makes me too warm , even sitting here with the remains of storm Landon piled up outside.
The mohair sweater, unbegun, and the yarn is still waiting after 20 d..n years. It will be my old folks home project.
A mitered square jacket, what a dream that was! Still using up all tge one skein hurs of green.
I shut myself down before I even get started sometimes. I read about the temperature blanket this week and the “all those little squares” option that you then sew together. It sounded amazing! Then I looked at my quilt wall where I am in the middle of sewing 220 2.5” squares together that do this amazing fade. But it is sooooo boring! I knew I would never sew all those little knitted squares together, so I cast on a cowl that I am whipping through.
I have been trying to replicate my beloved, tattered fisherman/Aran/cabled sweater from J Crew for years. I’ve Frankensteined many different patterns together, and tried and tried and tried. Right now I have a sweater done (has been done for two years) but the sleeves are too long, and the sweater just isn’t exactly what I envisioned. Do I have it in me to try a sixth time? We’ll see.
I started a scrap afghan about 20 years ago. The color scheme went out of style long ago. The pattern calls for changing needle size and using different weights of yarn every time the color changes. Very annoying. At one point, I promised myself that I would knit one color a night. Obviously it didn’t work because it is still staring at me every time I go into my closet. I still plan on finishing it when the color scheme comes back in style!
My UFO is a knee length Kimono knit in fingering wt on size 11 needles. I had fantasies about wearing it to the opera over a black slinky long dress. Never happened but I still am holding on to the yarn just in case
A mitered square blanket. Still love the yarn and the colors but the muse is gone…
A linen shawl I started at least 5 years ago
After reading about half of the posts here I felt inspired. About 15-18 years ago I bought a Hanne Falkenberg kit for a vest. The yarn was so rough it was like knitting with steel wool. There is no self respecting sheep that would have produced that. My fingers were just short of needing massive first aid. I endured until I finished one side of the front. It went into a bag and was put away until I started reading these posts this evening. I went deep into the closet to find it. Sure enough, the yarn had not changed texture in all these years. In addition to the project I found my cigar tube of crochet hooks that I hadn’t seen in all of these years also so finding the project turned into a positive thing. I pulled the needles out of side two of the vest and threw all of that yarn in the trash. How cathartic!
I tend to finish. My most challenging knitting project was a Traditional Irish design. One of those with cables and bobbles and stitch texture everywhere. I was only about 23 & could still see and keep track. I’m 63 now & have done a lot of knitting techniques but nothing as taxing as that. I love the Field Guides and would use them all.
A sweater I made for my husband out of a magazine five years ago was my biggest nightmare. The gauge or the yarn was all wrong, and when I blocked the pieces, they got enormous. I had to steek the bottom of front and back. I had no idea what to do with the sides. I couldn’t bring myself to finish it, it was all wrong. And so much work! My daughter finally insisted that I finish it and give it to my husband for Christmas. I ended up folding a big piece under on both sides. It is wearable. But the whole process broke my spirit. I hadn’t dared try another sweater until this winter.
I’m knitting one of those garter stitch blankets where you use up all your leftovers and stash. I don’t know why, but I cast on 300 stitches. That’s like 7 feet a row! I have knit about 18 inches of it. I haven’t worked on it in about a year.
My “Never-to-be-Finished” project is a Stephen West shawl. I love his work, but I can never remember where I’m at when I pick it up. It will be a perpetual project!
If I’m honest.. a cotton fingering weight mitre squares blanket from the fiesr MDK book. There are many squares. Some 4 squares sewn together. But not very much yarn, and it’s discontinued. Plus I’m not a big fan of seaming….. and yet I pretend one day….
I call it “assisted living” knitting, as in “by the time I finish that I’ll be in assisted living.”
My Paintbox blanket squares knit with Noro Kureyon has been waiting since 2014 to be pieced together and receive a border. Maybe this year!
I have a gorgeous shawl designed by Inese Sang called Bloom Your Heart Out. I’ve put it away because I got frustrated. I’m even using La Bien Aimee yarn! Hope I get the mojo to pull it out soon.
Started a Fantoosh shawl by Kate Davies something like 4 years ago. It’s on hold. But did (last year) finish a hooded cardigan than had been on hold for about 10 years. Oh, and the year before that, finished a cardigan for my husband that had been in progress for many years and been visited by moths while still in project bags, and needed re-knitting in several places. So there is hope yet.
Hmm… I have definitely jumped headfirst into some pretty ambitions projects. Though I have completed two double knits scarves (one in lace and one in fingering weight), deciding to make a double knit potholder with two different sides was a pretty crazy leap.
A “Rambling Rows” Afghan made using leftovers and orphan balls of sock yarn that will fit a queen sized bed — from box spring, up the side of the mattress, across the top of the mattress, down the other side of the mattress, to the box spring. I have completed the pattern once and am, if I remember correctly, about a little over half way through the pattern again. (Has to be worked twice because of the size of the yarn.) It has been sitting in a combination of 3 paper bags for over 5 years because there always seems to be something else that has to be completed by a deadline that needs to be done first.
It is quite honestly the ugliest, gaudiest, most eye-crossing, where the h@## are the sunglasses thing I have ever seen or made and my daughter absolutely loves it! I think I’ll try to get it finished this year and gift it to her and her husband for their 5 year anniversary present, which fortunately is at the end of October.
My most ambitious project was a pullover sweater knit from lace weight yarn. I was afraid I wouldn’t finish something that large on fine needles, but I actually found it enjoyable.
It took me 34 years to finish the raglan sleeve fair isle pullover I started when my daughter was 8! Of course, she could not even put her pinkie finger in the sleeves now – but nevertheless she was mad at me for donating it to our local kids closet. She says I owe her a sweater, so that will be started soon. I’m much better at finishing things now:}
Oh my…. I did some knitting back in the 1980s when I was single and lived in a little cabin in the forest. My knitting was boxed up and moved cross country with me to D.C. in 1987, I got married in 1988 and we stayed in DC for 20 years. Dear hubby was going to sell my unopened boxes of projects in the yard sale before we moved back home to Calif, but I said ‘I’m retiring – I will start knitting again!’ Around 2010 I finally opened up those boxes and found a half-finished all-over cable sweater I had made (who knew I could cable??) – and with some searching, found the pattern too! They are still waiting for me… and I know the sweater will be too small if I finish it. It’s a lovely brown tweed with white speckles. Maybe solid brown gussets up the sides and sleeve seams could make it bigger? Maybe someday I will try to find out…
I may yet make a handspun 25th anniversary Spin-Off Sweater. It has cables and two-color knitting with top-whorl and bottom-whorl spindles. I forget if it is intarsia or not, maybe knitter’s choice. I keep stalling at the spinning phase…
A sweater that I now hate.
Can an Aussie win this? (Not sure given we can’t subscribe yet). For what it’s worth – scrappy rug using left over sock yarn – never get around to using all those beautiful scraps,
basically everything is not getting finished lately! One that haunts me is a pair of wrist warmers I feverishly worked on to distract me during my child’s surgery over four years ago.
A cable stitch blanket started by a relative who passed away. I want to honor her but it just feels daunting.
A poncho with a lace pattern. I tried it 3 times and even bought different yarn before I bagged it.
A cardigan I started in 2009 but I may run out of the now discontinued yarn. I had enough initially but sadly some balls became Molly yarn.
I have an ever growing pile of socks to mend (my adult girls are particularly hard on their socks). I used to tell them to just throw the holey pairs out, but now my arthritis means they only get one pair a year from me. I have good intentions, but my KALs with deadlines or self-imposed deadlines always take precedence. The logic is that mending one sock will take a lot less time than knitting a new pair, but my knitting is not logical, it is impulsive and that’s the way I like it. I gifted the guides to my daughter in law and would love a copy for myself.
I started a bubbly curtain from MDK’s 1st book, I think? 8 years ago? Sigh
A sampler afghan. I started 5 years ago and only finished a few squares. It may never be finished.
Wow, a knitted map…that is amazing! If you ar like me it’s done in your head until right before you cast in on. I have a three-way tie for “never-going-to-happen”.
1. A super bulky blanket (it was supposed to go so fast).
2. A doll started for my youngest before she was born. She just turned 5. (It will be so special!)
3. A turtleneck vest started with yarn from the first sweater I started, and then frogged (I’m being so responsible and it’s so cute.)
I’m not holding my breath.
A simple scarf, but in lace weight mohair. The yarn is so beautiful I want to take a bite out of it, but I don’t want to knit with it. But it’s just a scarf; I’ll finish this because it’s so easy. Ugh, it’s lace weight mohair, but it’s beautiful, it’s just a scarf…. ugh.
Kaffe Fassett’s “Afghan” sweater. The front, 3/4 done, as well as the entire remainder of the original kit, has been sitting in a basket for nigh on 30 years. Ain’t gonna happen.
It’s The Central Park Hoodie, in a rust color. I was way too much of a novice and I actually got pretty far. Meanwhile it’s moved with me 3 times in the same carefully wrapped bag it’s been in. Now planning my next move!!!
I’m not saying “never”, but my WIP that seems least likely to be finished is probably a Peony – Pfingstrose Shawl that has been languishing part down in my stash for a…very long time now. It’s beaded lacework with unique, nonmemorizable rows; and it’s not so much “I don’t like making this what was I thinking” as “I have no idea where I’m up to what was I thinking”. The inertia barrier is high on that one. Well — that or one of the seemingly infinite blanket projects that I enthusiastically start making squares for, then starting a new blanket the next year without finishing the first.
A silver lining of Covid is that I now don’t have any unfinished projects! At least not any that had already been started. What I do have is a lot of yarn in separate storage places all over the house that was purchased, usually on a vacation, to make some ambitious project, mostly sweaters and blankets. To me it’s the most annoying kind of stash because I can’t really take out one ball of the yarn for something else without admitting that I won’t ever make the item, but it’s taking up valuable space. Surely not the worst problem to have – too much yarn!!
What am I not going to finish? Oh, the list goes on and on. I have 2 baskets full that need to be frogged. I think by casting on, and then get a sense of the fabric that is being created. Swatch? Really? Just not me!
Wow, that knitted map is quite an epic project! I haven’t started any epic projects but I’m thinking about a big ol’ blanket to knit over the next few years, maybe one that’s not too complicated.
I think my most ambitious project was the color work Ixchel sweater. There were plenty of times it sat for ages before I came back to it.
On the needles: a cowl with a Kitchener stitch join of 120 stitches! Kitchener stitch challenges me at 16 stitches!
I have SEVERAL never gonna finish projects! I’ve been trying to clean up my fiber/yarn room and found maybe FIVE bags of unfinished knitted SWEATERS! Of course, they are from the past, when I didn’t have enough sense to put the PATTERN in the bag. So I’ve no idea how to finish them, or what they are supposed to look like. (BIG SIGH)
I just finished a black and white baby blanket that I started for my first grandson. He is now twelve and his new baby brother will be the one to enjoy it.
I have a log cabin squares blanket with all the squares completed, but know in my soul that knitting the edgings, etc. is VERY unlikely to happen.
It’s a baby blanket, crochet squares with lots of different motives, I was pregnant, first child, still have the squares that I made…five children later added 5 grandchildren, that first baby is 45, her oldest is 20. With luck should that one ever have a child my, great grand child, I’ll think about finishing it.
Vellichor. I got up to the split for sleeves, and tried to mod it to make the sleeves longer, but it wasn’t turning out, so I stopped. It’s been about a year. I think it was one of those designs that when I saw it I wanted to wear it, but not necessarily knit it.
“Laura’s Blanket” by mustaavillaa. It’s beautiful but gonna take me forever.
I have a pair of socks toe up that I am knitting for my feet. I will never finish them because of all the adjustments I have to make to make them fit “me” . It is infinitely easier to knit something for someone else. (I guess I just don’t like my own feet!)
a blanket ki purchased in 2000. don’t think I’ll ever finish it~
and apparently, I can’t spell ‘kit’. sigh.
I started knitting in high school and life got too busy after I married to keep it at it. About 12 years ago I picked up my needles again and found several UFOs. A black and hot pink mohair cardigan that I started in the late 1980s will NEVER be finished–Ha!
UFO’s?! How I love thee(se) – summer top from last year – but it’s almost summer again, mohair lace top from 3 years ago – was making some mods but didn’t write them down so..?, vest from ~10 years ago – it’s in mohair and I don’t like it, will be a nightmare to frog. I’m starting to see a mohair connection here. I should have a tub just for UFOs, I think.
My only UFOs are several sweaters that haven’t been touched in over 20 years ago, some pretty complicated & all lovely, that only need to be seamed. This was before I realized that I really need to stick to seamless sweaters – I know how to sew perfect seams but there *always* will be something else I’d rather do! At this point they probably wouldn’t fit even if I sewed them up …
My never-finished project is a Swing Coat from probably 10 years ago. It’s in a storage box in my garage.
My never-gonna-finish project is a felted flower tote that you knit the separate pieces and then crochet together. I finished and felted the tote as a new knitter but I haven’t been able to learn to crochet.
I have a Bressay Dress on the needles for almost four years! I’m in the middle of the body and it’s so boring to knit around and around that I may never finish it.
I fear that I’ll never get around to finishing my Blue Shimmer Cuffs, which i started in a Bohus Stickning class with Susanna Hansson. They’re lovely and all, but the needles are size zero and size one, and that’s not my usual jam at all…
I’m never gonna finish that seemingly laceweight color work sweater knit from the bottom up… nope nope nope.
I’ve never worked up the guts to do a Really Big Project but probably the shawl I made with the constellations of the Northern hemisphere. At the end of a circle every row feels like several years, and it wasn’t a repeating pattern by any means, so I couldn’t zone out.
I really hope to someday pick up and finish a blanket my mom started in the 1950s… then 4 kids and seven grandkids and many other beautiful finished blankets “happened”
I started a baby afghan with a giraffe eating leaves from the top of a tree I have the giraffe’s feet done
I started a lace project as a new knitter- 16 years ago- that I abandoned in confusion after about a day. I could do it now with no problem, but my taste in yarn and projects has changed quite a bit since then. So it sits.
Long ago…a beautiful mohair crochet blanket, red and white octagon shapes. The red bled all over the white, and there were too many pieces to sew together. It went to the Goodwill, after several years of crocheting, admiring, and stressing – chalk it up to experience.
My “learn to knit afghan” has been languishing in the closet for about 20 years. I think I got about half way through the squares. As I became a better knitter, I also became more particular about the yarn I use. If I’m going to all that work, it should be with something I really enjoy knitting with.
I plan on working on the beekeeper quilt until I’m 90
I started a Featherweight Sweater years ago (so long ago I’m not sure how long it’s been, definitely well over 10 years), I’m about halfway through the pattern and unlikely to finish it. I am contemplating frogging it.
Ha, ha. I have to laugh as I have a gorgeous multi color sweater that has been in a bag for over 10 years because I got way too large for it to ever fit me. Since losing 50 lbs, I may need to drag it out and see if there is a possibility it will ever fit so I feel the need to finish it.
I knit a color work sweater that was going to be my first steeked cardigan only to find I had made it way too small. I frogged it and tucked the yarn and pattern into to a clear zippered package that a set of sheets came in. I look at it once in a while and sigh
Ugh – I’ve been working on a sweater for three years now, and despite multiple attempts, my gauge seems to keep changing and I just cannot get the fit right. Probably time to frog it, but I’ve been too stubborn so far!
A blanket started in 2001… I have knit on it in the last 2 years. For one day…..
Argh! A cotton/linen top down sweater for my husband. The yarn makes me shudder. Started…13 years ago. Now one sleeve is done, but wonky. Tear it out?! Noooooo!!! Can you make a raglan sleeve sweater into a vest?…could I start a new one- armed style?…maybe….
One-armed *must* be on a runway somewhere!
My most ambitious project to date – a round lace table cloth. Knit from a pattern in a 70’s or early 80’s women’s magazine. No graphs – just line by line instructions. This was back when I had better eyesight and it turned out great. I have materials for a couple of fair isle sweaters that I don’t know if I will ever get to. Hope does stay with me, though. Never say never.
I selected the Clerestory Shawl for my first lace project. It is also my first project that requires reading a chart. I made it through the first half but I kept confusing the stitches in the second half. I set it aside last January and need to pick it back up.
Stephen West’s Painting Bricks Shawl
Yes, thank you for the sarcastic, eye-rolling, I-can’t-believe-what-I’ve done-to-myself account of your US map blanket. We can all understand! Probably I will never finish Design One, a cardigan by Jenny Watson. It’s been sitting since 2014. It’s only in need of sleeves, which are knit flat and then sewn and fitted in. I just don’t want to…
Crete sweater. Lovely sweater, clever design but I went off pattern early on thinking it wasn’t turning out big enough and now it’s done and I could fit 2 of me in it. Ripping back a sweater midstream is doable; so far ripping back a completed sweater, not so much.
a “learn to knit” knit blanket that is two years old and I still have two 9×9″ squares to finish. Then I have to block the squares and stitch them together. Oy!
I bought tons of Plötulopi cakes in “natural” shades to do a Kaffe blanket. How long has it been since that field guide came out? What was I thinking? He’s all about color, and I love all the brightest colors
A garter stitch blanket. Can’t stand working on it.
Some 1980s baby-blue, thick-thin, cotton yarn (plant fibres now make my hands hurt); part of the front of a top still on needles (I hate seaming); it’s doomed.
What will I never finish? I think that would be every sweater pattern WITH yarn that I always told myself would be super easy to knit up and finish. That may be so, but you have to start something in order to finish it! Big Sigh! Oh, well.
A scrappy blanket with 4×4″ squares. The remnant yarn (worsted weight) seems to never end. UGH!
The three headed dog from Tanis Gray’s Harry Potter Knitting Magic will likely never be completed. Sad to say to my grandson’s request!
Unfortunately, my white whale is a sweater for my husband. It’s been in the works for 5? years. Changed patterns, then husband expanded a bit, then not enough yarn, then yarn no longer available. I will say that he has plenty of hats and gaiters….
“Never gonna finish it”Project: Mutant fingerless glove / oven mitts. I began with too-thick yarn and too tight gauge. Does not bend so it looks like an oven bit…but the fingerless nature makes it a burnin hazard. Also it is too lumpy to use as a coaster. Also it is too misshapen and loose to use as a drink warmer. Also is so loose that when wearing and holding on bike handlebars, wind whistles straight up my arm like a wind funnel.
I’ve had a pair of socks waiting for the toes to be finished since (wait for it) 2010! Occasionally, I bring them out with the best of intentions, but after a few days I scoop them into a drawer where they mock me for another year.
Well it took me about four years to knit a brioche scarf in black yarn & I never thought I would finish. But last January (2021) I mailed that pretty squishy thing off to my dear niece in NYC. It was probably the roughest four years of my life but I did finish the scarf! You can do it, DG! Sending love & strength & wow that’s some project. Try a scarf?
Similar to others, a baby jumper for my son who is now 43.
I am very, very slowly working on a black cabled Curdach cardigan. Because it’s black, I can only work on it during daylight or in a brightly lighted room.
Hi there,
The object I will never finish is a long, variegated sweater vest. I purchased the yarn and pattern at The NYS Sheep and Wool way back sometime in the 1990’s when it still had a gem show attached to it and bouncy houses for the kids and a much different vibe than it currently emits. There were no “Rhinebeck sweaters” and such. So I bought a beautiful large skein and knit about half way up the vest and it was tossed aside and there it remains.
I started a Must Have Cardigan in 2008. All pieces knit and never seamed together. I sometimes don’t understand my procrastination. It’s a must have cardigan!!
I need to frog and remake a sweater that just wasn’t making me happy. For now it’s languishing in its unhappy state…
I have two sweaters, both started some years ago, both 3/4 done. I have, unfortunately (cough, cough) gained a few pounds in the intervening years. I’m afraid to pull out the UFO’s and see just how tiny I used to be and admit that I’m never going to be that size again. 🙂 🙁
Sometime in the ‘80’s, I started a color-blocked coat/sweater using five shades of Lopi. I have two sleeves done, two fronts, and part of the back. Or it is two sleeves, one front…..oh, I have’t looked at it for awhile and I’ve forgotten! But I drag it out of its box every so often because I think I should repurpose the yarn and then I see how far along it is, and think, no I should finish this sweater, all the while lovingly tucking it back into its box.
I wanted to make a throw pillow for our new house but it’s looking weird on the needles. I can’t decide if I should keep going in the hope it will look better when finished, or frog and try again. So it’ll probably sit for an eternity. Or until I need those needles for another project.
Won’t make anything that has to be seen together.
My Beekeepers Quilt may never be finished.
I love reading your comments, because they make me feel so ‘at home.’ No one outside our circle can possibly understand our love for yarn, our hesitancy in finishing certain projects and our desire to have others appreciate knitting as much as we do! Thanks for your fellow/girlship!
I have a heavily cabled and bobbled Michael Kors sweater (old Vogue Knitting) that I’ve actually knit the back of twice to change the size but has sat for the last, oh, maybe five or six years or more. I’m not sure that will make it out of the WIP pile.
I started a beautiful Irish fisherman style cabled cardigan about 20 years ago. I made a tiny change to the stitch pattern. It got packed away when we moved (18 years ago). Fronts and backs are complete but the sleeves are not. I have gotten it out to finish a couple of times but darned if I can figure out what I did to “tweak” the pattern. Note to self: WRITE THINGS DOWN
A pair of socks with adorable hand-dyed yarn. I hate knitting socks. I checked the other day when I added a row… started in 2014. I am on the ribbing (toe up) of first sock. I have frogged every other stubborn project. And yet the socks remain.
It was a sweater I started years ago. It was a map of the world. The front was North and South America. The back was Europe, Africa and Asia. Australia was on one sleeve. I got the back and half of the front done. After the years it spent in the back of the closet, I sold the partially completed sweater and all its many colors of yarn on eBay. It was very liberating. I hope the buyer finished it.
I almost finished a cotton sweater at least 12 years ago, it didn’t fit, modified it, still didn’t fit and was going to frog it, it’s still an unfinished sweater
“IT” immediately came to mind when I read about the US map project. “IT” is an afghan made up of numerous squares of different cable patterns. “IT “is stuffed in a bag in the back of my closet. I see “IT” every time I’m looking in my stash to start a new project! I was just thinking about getting “IT” out and finishing “IT” the other day! LOL! Well, we’ll see how that goes when I’m back home after our winter sojourn in Florida!
There is a hand quilted quilt in a drawer in the basement that has moved twice with me and will never be finished. There are many many knitting projects waiting for me to be inspired to finish, but hopefully not NEVER.
I had finished about 75% of Kiefer, the Forest Dragon, a pattern by Marie Overton, when the deadline (because of covid) went away. Her name is Morag, and a new deadline may be on the horizon, so with knitting group help, she MAY get finished this year.
I had a self-designed stranded sweater in fingering-weight wool, two colours per row throughout… neck-down. Got the body about 2/3 done, then it sat for some years… got the body finished, just the sleeves to do, and then it languished for more years… last year I finally made myself finish it, though the sleeves took 3 tries. Also, by now of course it did not fit me but it fits my daughter-in- law AND looks great on her, so I gave it to her. Took me, in all, over ~13 years. Now it is a Kaffe Fasset wrap featured on the cover of Vogue Knitting mag a few years ago. It is almost half-done… I deal with the Intarsia and stranded rows by knitting backwards instead of turning and purling, so I never have to tangle the colours by turning the work. But it is hibernating, again, at present. Maybe 3 years so far, on the needles.
My never finished objects tend to be in fingering or sock yarn. I have several solo socks, a lacy top in fingering, and the start of a fingering fade sweater. All are waiting for me to finish my other fiddly projects including a ribbed sweater in light sport and a brioche sweater in worsted.
My most ambitious project is Sidsel Hoivik’s Morning Mist Jacket. I bought the kit in June 2020 and just finished knitting the body. I still need to knit the sleeves, prepare and cut the steeks, knit the neckband and button bands, sew in the sleeves and facings, do the crochet border and embroidery and add the beads and sequins. Whew! Thank you for offering this giveaway!
My most ambitious project: I decided to knit a cerical stole for my brother, the pastor. Nevermind that I am more buddhist than Christian, he’s my adored brother, and I wanted to make something that symbolized my love & support of who he is. Of course, I involved him in the planning, since there are many considerations, both liturgical and personal, in choosing a stole. He decided on a solid green one, with a Jerusalem cross about 10″ from the bottom on each side, embroidered in the same color as the stole because he wants it to be subtle. I knit some stitch swatches for him, and of course he liked linen stitch the best. And there aren’t any great stole knitted patterns that I could find, so I had to design the thing. And I had to figure out how to stabilize it so that gravity won’t drag the ends down to his feet. And I had to learn how to embroider onto a knitted fabric.
I am a fast knitter. I knit several hundred projects per year, from dishcloths to hats to lace shawls. But it’s been 2 years now. The stole is finally knitted, and has its first layer of stabilizing fabric. The first Jerusalem cross (which is actually 5 crosses) is about half embroidered.
I sure hope he doesn’t retire before this thing is done, but I’m hopeful that I’m in the home stretch. Maybe 3 more months…
An all over Fair Isle cardigan. One day, maybe…
I started a fair isle vest for my husband when our sons were babies. There are a few more years before highschool but pandemic and homeschool has taken away my newly rediscovered ability to count or focus.
Wow. What an undertaking you have on your needles. I bow to your greatness in even attempting it. My forever unfinished project will most likely be a sweater that has been hibernating/marinating/collecting dust if it weren’t in a bag stuck in my closet. Got the body done. Knit the sleeves according to custom fit pattern, WAY to big. UGG. Of course, color work on sleeves and bottom of sweater body. Ripped out sleeve, tried again, nope- too big. And yes, I met gauge on the body, one would think sleeves would be on target as well. Oh well, many times, I’ve thought about just making it a vest, but that idea is still stewing.
I recently ditched my two oldest projects completely (one had been attacked by moths and the other was just… stupid) So now my oldest is a cardigan that was started about 4 years ago and really doesn’t need much but I just can’t get myself interested in finishing it!
Back in the day it was popular to make a mitered square blanket using fingering weight yarn scraps and size three needles. I was so inspired I started one. Currently it’s about the size of a scarf (It’s intended to be twin bed size). It’s still a wip, not sure when it will be done.
I was going to say the Lithia Shawl. It was a stretch beyond my knitting ability (and I really only finished it bc it was a MKAL and there was a dense forum on Ravelry for it). As my husband said when I gave it back to its owner (they bought the yarn, I knitted), there are a lot of curse words in that shawl…. But reading the comments reminded me there’s a three color tea cozy hiding out somewhere. It looked so pretty and fun years ago but I didn’t really know what I was doing and I never did make it to adding the third color in. I should find the scant 3 or 4 rows that I did and frog it to be something else.
Every once and a while I go back to my mitered square crazy blanket to be made of my way too many ends of sock yarn. Since I continue to knit socks, I will always has a few more squares to make up and add to the piece.
I actually made a pattern for a blanket that I’ve started and hope to finish this year. One of my dear friends is a huge Vanilla Ice fan. He asked for a custom blanket because he’s tall and most blankets don’t cover his feet when they’re snuggled up