The weight

Do you remember that old song by The Band, The Weight? Old projects hanging around and around always make me think of that song. I'm not talking about the started-last-month-and-am-waiting-for-a-rainy-day-to-plow-through projects (you can see my list of these to the right), but rather the started-back-in-college-and-have-been-moving-around-with-me-ever-since projects.

Notably, I have three of these of the knitting variety. One is a light pink cabled mohair sweater that resembled a large, fuzzy leg-warmer (I have no idea why I thought this was going to be a lovely sweater - chalk it up to youth). The second was a painstaking lacework and intarsia sweater, where I'd gotten as far as completing the back, front, and sleeves but had not completely assembled them, tucked the millions of colored ends, or knit the collar. The third is a dark green chenille simple center-cabled sweater that could conceivably be worn if it was finished, but I'd only completed most of the back.

So, what to do with these old projects? Here, I think, is weight that should be easy to lose. But, it's hard to throw away those old projects that I worked so hard on, and, worse, could be finished. I think it is the possibility of completion that is so difficult. I look at them and think, "All I need to do is just rework this bit and then..."

The brave thing to do would be to take nice pictures, throw away the partial pieces, and sell the remaining yarn on eBay. But here is my inevitable solution: remove the needles (they are still on the needles - yikes!), pack them away in a box, and put them in the garage to be discovered another day, when I'll pick them up and think, "All I need to do is just rework this bit and then..."

Who knows? Maybe pink mohair will be all the rage by then.