Stitch'n Time: Keeping it Fun

As you might imagine, it's been an interesting week with a new puppy in the house.  Even though all responsibility for him is supposed to fall to my youngest child, the owner, I can't possibly ignore him.  I find myself petting him and going with them on walks.  He is lovely to be around.  Today he even allowed me to puppy sit  him.

He has passed the yarn test.  He watched me knitting and didn't try to snag a ball from me.  Perhaps that's more a kitten/cat thing.  Time will tell.

A year or two ago, I purchased a box of this discontinued dotted yarn, Bernat Dippity Dots.  I chose 3 balls of each colour except the black.  Enough to make at least 2 if not 3 baby blankies.

As I was lamenting not having some stitching at hand, I recalled this box and that I had printed out the patterns I wanted to do.  Real easy to get started from that point.

Each of the squares knits up to about 5 inches on a side.  As you can see from the first photo, subsequent blocks are formed by picking up stitches from the previous block.  No sewing together individual blocks at the end of knitting.

The first three blocks are completed and looking great.  They seem to square up once the neighbouring block is added.  The final blankie will by 7 x 7 blocks.

This is the type of yarn that you don't want to be ripping out.  I did un-knit one block as I didn't like the way it turned out. I don't plan to do that again.  I could have left it, but it would have bugged me for ever and any knitter looking at the blanket would have noticed the mistake immediately.  The new colour was added on the wrong side, which meant that the wrong colour loops showed on the front side.   With that fixed and notes added on how to avoid this in the future, I am stitching forward.

For the past year, I have been telling myself that I have to finish languishing projects before I am allowed to start big new ones.  That is like punishing myself.  Stitching is supposed to be fun for me.  There is probably a reason that a project is hidden away unfinished.  I might even get back to it in the future.  But right now, I wanted and needed something new.  Who knows, when I find that next bag with an unfinished project lurking inside, it might have morphed into something that I want to work on once again.

Do you have an unfinished project hidden away.  Do you hope that one day you will open the bag and it will magically be completed or that it will have transformed its self into a work of art.  Please share your thoughts about it in the comments or link to a post you've written about it.

Mister Linky is waiting below.