Catching up on a hibernating project

For Thanksgiving, my in-laws came to visit and they were here from Wednesday through Monday (just this morning). I was happy to have them here, but it meant that I couldn't work on my MIL's Christmas present during that time (a shawl), so I had to find other projects to work on. After doing a doll cardigan and skirt for my nieces, I decided to pull out a project that has been sitting in my closet for a long time.

It's an afghan with 12 different blocks. During 2010, I took a class at my LYS during which we did one block per month throughout the entire year, learning new techniques with each block. I actually completed all of the blocks not too long as 2010, but I had not put them together. It seems like finishing is always the bane of my knitting existence. It's not like it was all that tedious--just picking up stitches and doing a three-needle bind off, but I kept putting it off. I decided to pull that out of the closet and finish it up now, before the end of the year, so that it would only be a project that took four years rather than drifting off into a fifth year!

I realized that the final block wasn't completely finished (it was a simple garter stitch stripe block meant to use up leftovers), so I completed that and started piecing the blocks together. As of right now, I have finished joining all four sets of three blocks and am just about halfway through joining two of those sets of three together. It is slow and tedious, but it is getting done, which is the important thing. Now I just have to keep at it. I'll post pictures when it is done.

And I got a bit of a reprieve in knitting time for my MIL's present as we won't see them until the Saturday after Christmas, so that gives me a couple of extra days beyond Christmas (also means I don't have to finish early to leave time to mail it!). So perhaps I can finish the Christmas knitting as well as the afghan by the end of the year.

Of course I got slammed with editing projects today which means taking more time away from my crafting. I also want to set up our Christmas tree and do some other Christmas decorations. I guess that means I should stop writing and get back to editing! I'll make sure the next few posts have a lot of pictures to make up for the lack in this one.