This has now been on my needles for nearly a year (my Ravelry record shows it was cast on on October 20th 2012). I hang my head in shame.
I so want to be wearing this hoody. It would be perfect for slipping on over a long-sleeved T-shirt and jeans and running out of the door in the mornings. I'm finding it hard to keep up my mojo with the project though. At the moment I need my knitting, and the rest of my life, to feel manageable. I know that this hoody is well within my knitting skill-set. It's not that I don't think I can do it. It's just that I know that it's going to take me quite a long time. I don't get nearly so much knitting time these days (not a huge surprise!!), and it's hard to keep working on a project that I can't imagine finishing this winter, even if it's the only thing I work on.
I worked on it over the summer while we were away, and it was great to crank out some stripes. The changes of colour provide some visual clues to the progress being made. I swapped from spit splicing the yarns, to just knitting them in. It's not quite as neat, but it's less fiddly to do, and interrupts my knitting rhythm less.
You can see from these two pictures, that when I do work on it, it gets bigger! So I'm stuck in a negative cycle with it. I really want to wear it, but I can't get enough motivation to work on it as I can't see quick enough progress at the moment. Which doesn't help, as of course if I don't work on it, it doesn't grow... I think that at the moment, if I want a new cardigan it really needs to be in DK or aran wool. I maybe need to ease myself back into feeling successful at larger projects.
This makes me feel a bit sad though, as I totally adore the design, and still remember the excitement of seeing Kate's first pictures of it when I was working on Colours of Shetland last year. Life changes though, and at some point soon I'm sure I will work up the speed to get this finished. That moment isn't now though - unless you all have some great motivational or time-bending ideas for getting this project going again?
In the meantime I will be knitting on some socks...
