Finish (or frog) – Exchequered

I think the Finish or Frog Knitalong is a marvelous idea.  I have far too many projects that I’ve abandoned, and I’d really like to cull through them and get them under control. 

But today, we focus on prevention.  What makes me abandon projects?  How can we identify, and then prevent, UFOism?  In honor of Finish or Frog I’ve decided to focus on (and please-oh-please finish) an “at risk” project.

You remember exchequered.

I’ve come so far that frogging isn’t an option, so the “finish or frog” decision has already been made. But this project has definitely become a slog, unfortunately. I call this project “at risk” because I’ve already missed my deadline – I wanted to give this to my sister in December. If I keep putting it off, it will be too warm for scarves before I know it, and I would probably never get around to finishing it. So my new deadline is February first. I have a week to finish this bad boy.

I tend not to make scarves because it’s so hard to mentally measure your progress. Once a scarf is a few feet long, another couple of inches doesn’t make a noticeable difference. I’ve been departing from the checkerboard pattern a bit in the main body of the scarf, so I can mentally check off my progress by thinking “four magenta blocks from the variation in the pattern, now five, now six.”

I think it’ll go a lot faster once the checkerboard pattern breaks up. I haven’t been following her chart, I’ve been making it up as I go along. Whenever I do that I find the knitting goes faster, because I want to keep going to see how it turns out. We’re at 52 inches now, so finishing in a week is reasonable if I really focus on this project.