In my quest to finish more projects than I start, it can be a bit tricky to figure out just what exactly constitutes an unfinished project.
Rather than get a wrinkle or gray hair trying to figure that out this morning, I turned my attention to a decidedly nearly finished project that clearly met the definition of unfinished: my Twinkie Chan buttered toast scarf.
After a good soak in soapy water (some of the yarn, is after all, 30 years old), I rolled the two strips between towels to get rid of the excess water, and then laid out my Knitter’s Block pieces and pinned the strips in place to dry:
Then I moved into less certain territory.
Around this time last year, I joined a crochet-along. The purpose of the crochet-along was (and continues to be) to make all of the squares in Jean Leinhauser’s book 101 Crochet Squares from American School of Needlework.
While I currently have no partially completed squares from this project, at 48 weeks into the project, I found that I was 17 weeks behind, so I determined that the crochet-along, while not technically an unfinished project, is one for which I need to get current.
With that in mind, I used the color scheme from this box of Satsumas from Bee Sweet Citrus:
Located approximately 9.5 miles as the crow flies from the house where my I spent my summers with my grandmother in Fresno, California, Sweet Bee Citrus has a variety of products, but Satsumas are my citrus fruit of choice for December.
Ever since I began reading Truman Capote’s story, A Christmas Memory, to my children, I have thought of satsumas as a traditional Christmas food, and the numerous fruit sales to raise money for various high school bands in Wake County, North Carolina, suggests that I am not the only one who has made this association.
Having settled on a color scheme based on the memories a box evoked, I then had to pick a square to crochet. With 17 options, it wasn’t easy to choose, but eventually, I settled on square 11 as begin a suitable vehicle for my color scheme, and using a 5.0 mm hook and Red Heart Super Saver pumpkin yarn, I made the first two rounds of the square:
Then, in what felt like an incredibly bold color move, I used Red Heart Super Saver royal:
Emboldened by what seemed to me the success of rounds 3 and 4, I moved on to rounds 5 and 6 using the Red Heart Super Saver bright yellow:
With those rounds behind me, it was time to move onto the Red Heart Super Saver paddy green:
Then back to the pumpkin:
with a final round of royal to pull it all together:
While I had moments of doubt that I had to crochet past while making the square, once it was done, I was pleased with the effect, and by then, the scarf I had washed and blocked earlier was sufficiently dry, and I joined the 9 pieces of toast to the six pieces of toast to form the scarf seen here:
Not every day is as productive as today was.
There are times that I am slow to make a choice; times when I cannot work past the doubts, but instead crochet and frog, crochet and frog, until my time is up and nothing, it seems, is done.
But days of indecision and doubt are just as much a part of my work as a day such as today; these modest successes are what I draw on to get me through the more challenging days.
