UFOs and FNSI...

Years ago my best friend worked for the Australian army  (6th brigade) as the Brigadier's secretary and she would drive me nuts when she 'spoke' in initials and acronyms but eventually even in my job we 'spoke' that way too, as in NAPLAN, QCAT, ACARA...but I digress...

Last night I joined in at Heidi's blog here for the monthly Friday Night Sew In (FNSI). I sewed, but my project was not with fabrics and cottons. I sewed the borders on an unfinished object (UFO) which had been languishing in my knitting bag for a while...oh all right...I confess...it's been lying idle and unfinished for a long time! Now why do some items become UFOs and not others? Not all UFOs are created equal for that matter. Sometimes it's boredom, sometimes something doesn't turn out as expected and there is no real joy at the thought of finishing it.
My UFO was a baby blanket for my daughter's god-daughter. DH remembers us driving up to Warwick for her baptism 9 years ago. The first stumbling block with it was that because I didn't do a tension swatch first, it became obvious that the blanket would be a bit wider than it needed to be. I solved that and saved myself lots of extra knitting, by turning the blankie so that the width became the length. Then I knitted the boring garter stitch borders to match the garter stitch 2rows which occur every six rows on the pattern. Occasionally my daughter would enquire about the baby blankie and I would assure her it would soon be completed but was still a Work in Progress (WIP). She's also still waiting for a knitted throw for her as the one she has already, was knitted by me for her when she was in her early teens. About 2 years ago I said that when I finished this baby rug, I would give it to her and she could give it to whom ever she chose.



Now that I'm retired...I thought I should make some sort of effort to finish this UFO and about 6 weeks ago decided I would finish it and take it for 'Show and Tell' to 'Sisters of Stitch' on the following Wednesday. I finished weaving in some loose ends and started sewing on one border. I divided the border into 4 and then the same with the side on the blanket. Tacked the border at these points and then started to sew the border on. I was just about finished one side when I realised there was some puckering...I started to unpick a few inches carefully to re-stitch and then a minor disaster occurred. I nicked some stitches...luckily this damage was done to the knitted border not the body of the blanket...that would have been a major disaster! lol



'Bubble' pattern 

 I couldn't mend the nick to my satisfaction so I started to unpick all the border. Let's just say that I had sewn it so that it wouldn't come apart...I won't go into details but suffice to say I ended up using scissors and ended up with lots of 'frogged' yarn. Then I calmly folded it all up and threw it in the knitting bag...until Tuesday this week. I knitted a new border and sewed it on last night... Joy of joys! It's all finished!! Hallelujah!!