Finishing it all up

I've read on some other blogs about other knitters making the push to finish up some projects--like this Seaman's Cap for the Christmas at Sea program. I can understand this urge to finish. As spring hits (like it did today in Seattle in a big way) I just don't have the desire to dive into something huge, but I do feel a sort of guilt for all my abandoned projects that have fallen to the wayside because I've developed a crush on something thing to knit.

But happily most UFOs are forgiving, as long as you can remember where you were in a stitch pattern, what needles you were using (I am notorious for pulling needles from projects for something more important but not making a note about what needles I just yanked free) or where you put the rest of the yarn. On the needle front, I've gotten good about tying "needle knots" in the tail of the cast on. 8 knots for a size eight needle and so on. Haven't quite figured out what do about 1/2 sizes, but for the better part of valor a safety pin and a post-it might be a good idea.
Here's an UFO that I've sitting neglected in the knitting basket since Christmas. This is my first pair of toe up socks, using the Interweave Knits (Summer 2007) article by Ann Budd. I had bought this skein of Socks that Rock (I believe the colorway is "Christmas Rocks") in November thinking it would be cool to wear Christmas socks for the holidays. Now I never specified which holiday and it looks like they will be adorning my feet just in time for May Day. Besides, there is too much yellow in this skein for Christmas. Now the colorway has done nothing but pool, they are ugly as sin, but I am determined to finish them because when I put the one completed one on, my toes nearly died and went to heaven.

Their other benefit is that they have taught me a couple of new techniques: A Turkish cast on, short row heels, and toe up simplicity. But here was the rub, I did all that several months ago, and had stopped knitting Sock 2 just before the second heel. And what a heel it turned out to be. After my third rip out, a few tears and the husband's requisite comment: "But I thought you knit to relax . . . ", they very nearly ended their life on the needles.

But like most things that baffle me at 10:00 at night, come the next afternoon, a good latte in front of me and a quiet hour at the kitchen table, I muddle my way through it . And that is what I love about knitting. That no matter how difficult a pattern or a technique looks, if you just sit down and do it one stitch at a time, and don't look ahead and don't let yourself get flustered by reading directions ahead that appear to have been written in some ancient, forgotten tongue, you can do it.

Now where did I put that yarn for those Monkey socks.