A look at "progress".

I was recently confronted with a question on Facebook. A yarn company was asking folks, "How many 'works-in-progress' do you have going right now?" I wondered if they meant that there was actual progress being made, or if the multitude of half-finished pieces counted as stuff on which theoretical progress was being made. I wandered the house with a clipboard. Finished items net one point, languishing pieces get a negative, and works in progress count as neutral.

Okay, front room. There IS a sweater hanging on the door, but it's a WWII Red Cross vest. Done and on display, therefore not a work in progress. Score one for me and an anonymous knitter from decades ago. On to Junior's room.

Hmm... Two sweaters, six pairs of socks, three hats. Finished, so no longer 'projects'. More points for me. Wait, what's this? Half a sock in a drawer! They're either intended for somebody else, or I was asleep when I chose the color. I suppose that when you can no longer remember who it's for, a project no longer counts as "in progress". Minus one point, and moving on.

Here we are in the living room, studiously avoiding looking in the corner. What, you looked? Rats. Okay, so that bag has about five things in it, but they're going to get done as soon as I find A) the charts for the next section or B) more yarn. They may not be progressing, but I have big plans. I just... need a little more time to sort everything out. And stuff.

Kitchen! Now, there is nothing in here that could... Oh. Heh, heh. Come on, it's just one lousy half-knitted dish cloth. It's something to work on when the microwave is running slowly. That means it's kind of "in progress".

I'll spare you the shock of seeing the mudroom and announce that I get a minus three for that room. Scarves. They got boring.

Let's see what's in the birds' room. One neutral for yet another scarf, and two negatives for the pair of unfinished shawls. I'm not even going to pretend that I'm going to have a chance to work on them in the next month or so. Complex lace patterns require quiet and concentration. I have a three-year-old and a night job. Do the math.

The bathroom has no knitting in it because that would be weird and I finished that piece already, anyway.

This brings us to the bedroom, which Himself likes to call "Where'd You Put the Bed?!" I may have one or two knitted items in here, waiting to be progressed upon. Fourteen, tops. Unless you count the boxes in the closet and the attic, in which case the number becomes meaningless and requires an astrophysics degree to calculate.

What can I say? I like knitting. And in my defense, it IS called "knitting" and not "finishing that baby blanket before the kid goes off to college". So there. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a sweater to finish. All it needs is the collar, which I will make as soon as I can dig up the right needles. I think they're in this drawer...

Ooo, look at this cool yarn I found!