JENN McKINLAY: It took me 15 years to finish this %$#@!&^%$# skull scarf for Hooligan 1, but I did it just in time for his 25th birthday. Y'all, I don't think I've ever felt such a sense of accomplishment in my life.
How did I get myself into this, you ask? Maybe you didn't. I'll tell you anyway.
I decided to teach myself to knit in 2008. I made a bunch of simple scarfs, very fun, but then wanted a challenge. While looking through patterns one day, Hooligan 1 saw this one and asked if I'd make it for him. "Sure!" I said WAY TOO CONFIDENTLY. I bought the pattern off the Ravelry website and bought the yarn and set to work. At the same time, Otto our salt and pepper schnauzer entered our lives.
I had gotten a good start on the scarf when Otto got into my yarn basket and as the Hub said when he found him, "I didn't know where the dog started and the yarn began and vice versa." Mercifully, the puppy didn't strangle himself. The destroyed project was ripped out and put on a shelf and promptly forgotten about. A few years later, I found it and started again assured that the puppy who now had his buddy Annie as a playmate would stay out of it. They did.
But here's the thing. THOSE STITCHES ARE TINY.
This frigging scarf took FOREVER!!! I'd pick it up and work on it a little bit through the year and then put it down to work on more interesting projects. It became a running joke between me and H1 as to whether or not I'd ever finish it. Then I was cleaning my office, found it again, and realized I was 30 rows from finishing. Newly motivated I spent the week before his birthday working on it. Maybe four hours of work in total. WHY didn't I get this done years ago? Argh!!!
Needless to say, H1 was surprised and pleased and I was relieved. Seriously, achievement unlocked, as the gamers say, and I will never knit anything with those teeny tiny stitches ever again!
So, fess up, Reds and Readers, what's a project you put off forever and then it took no time to finish?
Congratulations! If it were me, I don't think I'd ever have finished, what with those teeny, tiny stitches. But it definitely looks amazing . . . .
ReplyDeleteBeing particularly good at procrastination, there's this embroidery piece I began a gazillion years ago, moved from house to house to house, and have never finished. [Of course, I never promised it to anyone, so no one is feeling particularly sad that it's still on the stretcher frame.] No excuses, just procrastination . . . .
Back when she was in high school, my sister decided she would knit a pair of socks for me for Christmas. That Christmas I got one sock; it was blue. I got the second sock for Christmas three years later; it was also blue. By that time I had grown and so did my feet, from a size twelve to a size sixteen. Needless to say the socks did not really fit but I cherished them anyway.
ReplyDeleteSock puppets!
DeleteThe scarf is magnificent, and so is H1!
ReplyDeleteBest photos ever, Jenn!!
Projects that get dropped around here, stay dropped. Not proud. Just is.
I love the scarf! I never finished a sweater for one of my sons. If I'd taken as long as you took, the sweater would be for his child...but I don't knit any more and gave all my supplies to my daughter-in-law.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I did finish a lovely full-size quilt that my mother had started for me and wasn't able to complete. The blocks were mostly assembled but I couldn't find the pattern she'd used, so I arranged them in a way I liked them, added a border of African fabric and a backing of a different African fabric from my cloth bank, and had a woman with a long-arm machine quilt it. It's beautiful and lives on my bed year round. My sister did the same with two different quilts our mom had started, and I used squares in light pastels that Mommy and her quilt group had made for Ida Rose's quilt. I guess the conclusion is that I'll finish projects involving sewing but not knitting!
DeleteI love the family connection to the quilts. It's very sweet.
DeleteCan’t think of a “project” (as in making an item of use). It did take me three Advents to complete a 1,000 piece Advent jigsaw. But never again! Elisabeth
ReplyDeleteLove the scarf. There are a few quilt pieces that I need to stitched together.
ReplyDeleteI love your story! The scarf is awesome and well worth waiting for. It looks pretty complicated to me!
ReplyDeleteWhen we went through mom's things while cleaning out the parental house, we found a half completed red knit sweater. I don't know how many decades it sat up there, but a long time. I think it was for my twin, because mom knitted me a purple sweater when we were 15, and M didn't get one. Sad.
Your story about your pup reminds me of my first golden, Gloria. She got into everything, including tearing up the instructions to a cross stitch project (tiny Christmas ornaments) twice! I had to write for replacement instructions. Aargh.
What a great story and great pics Jenn! How interesting - good reminder how sticking with something pays off. Hooligan 1 looks very pleased with his very cool scarf!
ReplyDeleteYou did it! Congratulations. What size needles did you use? I really dislike using very fine needles. I also dislike using different colors as you had to; the result is never smooth and even for me. I did my my granddaughter a Harry Potter scarf, but that involved many rows of one color and then switching to another. I like best to do a lot of special stitches, as in an Irish fishermen's style.
ReplyDeleteMorning All ~ Paula B here ~ I’ve tried to learn knitting. Can’t. Or, um, won’t. It’s the incessant clicking sound of the needles crashing together and having to coordinate two hands. Never worked out. Yet a ticking clock is a favorite “calm down” noise. So, I crochet. Very quiet and a fairly still second hand. Being that I am a desert dweller like you, I start my crochet projects in the summer and when it get OMG hot, I put them aside to pick up again when the temperature go down to tolerable level. By October I usually have at least two partially completed items (shawls and afghans are my thing) to finish. Works well for me. I made a puff quilt once, no, I made 3/4 of the pillowed squares. Put it away for awhile and then many years later out it went. That was one annoying quilt. Love the picture of you and H1.
ReplyDeleteIf I start something, I generally finish it. It is the starting that is my problem.
ReplyDeleteJenn, that is absolutely fantastic! What a work of art! And I think it was done at the perfect time. Exactly when it was meant to be.
ReplyDeleteJenn, the scarf was well worth the wait!! Fabulous! H1 looks pretty darned happy with it and with you! Great job, Mom! I would never even attempt a pattern that challenging. In fact, forget patterns, period. I can knit extremely simple scarfs, ditto for crochet. I found a knitting project begun...mumble mumble... several seasons ago. Lovely yarn, very very fine. I will finish it, one of these days. Currently knitting a scarf with a much heavier textured yarn. Have already ripped it out...mumble mumble... of times and started over. Ten rows in now!! I think I've figured it out. :-)
ReplyDeleteI laugh because I have a three year old crochet sweater in my closet that I looked at just yesterday. I have about half of the front panel complete - yep, need the back, sleeves, and the neck. Maybe someday. Maybe someday not. I think I'll see if I can teach myself to knit! That sounds like fun, too. Love the scarf, it was worth the 15 year wait.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on finishing the scarf!
ReplyDeleteI am beyond impressed! I tried knitting and got into it briefly - until nothing I made fit. But you've inspired me to tackle my biggest needlepoint project - a stocking for my daughter. By the time I finish it, I'll be lucky if she's only 40. (She's 25 now.)
ReplyDeleteI love the scarf! He probably appreciates it more at 25 than he would have at 10.
ReplyDeleteI made a set of needlepoint pillows for a college friend and her husband more than thirty years ago. Another college friend saw them and requested I make a set for her and her husband. I completed the stitching of hers and have less than a third to go on his. (Each of these pillows has the person’s first initial done in various styles of stitches.) In the meantime, there was a disagreement and both of these women stopped speaking to me — for almost twenty years. The unfinished pillow has remained on the stretchers this whole time and been through two moves, although I have no idea where the yarn went. I am no longer friends with this woman, though we have spoken. I have looked at the needlepoint canvas and considered finding someone to finish it for me, but haven’t tried. Suddenly a month and a half ago, the woman calls me out of the blue to tell me her husband died last August. Now I feel guilty about not finishing “his” pillow. (Sorry, Jenn. Not nearly as upbeat a story as your skull scarf!) — Pat S
Jenn, the scarf looks great, the two of you are charming, and you can tell H1 Youngest said, "Oh, he's cute!"
ReplyDeletePut me in the never-finished needlepoint pillow camp. My downfall is blocking the pieces and sewing on a back - SO BORING. Some of the pillows I also got distracted by life, picked up and put down, and now they rest in my Basket of Shame. One is a Georgetown University emblem that I started right after Ross and I got married. (Georgetown being his alma mater.) I matriculated into law school three months after our wedding, and I had visions of needlepointing while I listened to lectures. What was I thinking?!? I wrote constant, endless notes and still didn't catch everything I needed to get down.
I still have the piece, half done, and Ross passed away eight years ago! Maybe I'll finish it and pressure my grandson 'Paulie' to choose Georgetown when he's ready for college. Eighteen years sounds like just enough time to finally complete the project...
I still have a needlepoint and a cross stitch project. I bought them on sale a couple of years ago, thinking I would get back into crafts. Uh, no. They are still sitting in a corner, gathering dust, while I willfully ignore them. Julia, I have the same downfall with needlepoint-getting them blocked.
ReplyDeleteI have two quilt tops, one completed, one still blocks but not assembled, from my great-grandmother. They were in the trunk I took out of grandma's when they downsized some forty years ago. They are still in the trunk. I haven't completed them. About five years ago I started blankets for my niece and nephew. They are started.
ReplyDeleteCongrats, Jenn! That scarf is amazing! And you and H1 are both adorable.
ReplyDeleteNot a crafty person here. My grandmother tried to teach me to knit and I hated it. Maybe because I'm dyslexic? However, I love quilts, and my late friend Gigi, a very accomplished quilter, was helping me make a quilt. We had lots of fun choosing fabrics and then sitting round the dining room table on Sunday afternoons stitching fabric pieces together. I still have two big bags of quilt fabric tucked in a closet but I haven't been able to talk myself into giving them away.
This gave me fits of laughter! Yes indeedy I have had, as my mother would have said, "eyes bigger than my stomach." - I started to crochet a bedspread and ended up with a handbag. An embroidered quilt for our double bed ended up being a baby blanket. I know when I'm overmatched. It's surprising that I ever finished a novel and didn't up with 16 short stories instead.
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