The world's slowest knitter

That would be me.

I love poring over knitting books and making elaborate plans for what I will knit in which colours. But then it comes down to the actual accummulating of stitches on needles, and things never quite run like I plan.

Right now I'm completely stuck with two sorry projects...

Exhibit 1. The bamboo mitten

Back in January, I thought to myself that I wouldn't be unrealistic and plan to make birthday presents throughout the year, but instead I'd get a headstart on Christmas. If I 'whipped up' a few pairs of mittens and a couple of scarves, I thought, I'll have them tucked away in a cupboard by summer and be feeling very smug with a homemade present stash come December...

Ah, some things we never learn. Like how very uncommitted to projects I can be. I've had this mitten on the needles for goodness knows how long. I LOVE the bamboo yarn - it's silky and soft and a fabulous colour. But give it just a little room and it'll tangle itself up into an ungodly mess. And now I'm stuck with the world's biggest knot, and only a few rows to go... Untangling can be somewhat relaxing, but it's a slow process. At this rate, some lucky person will be bemusedly receiving one lonely thumbless mitten on Christmas day!

And on to

Exhibit 2. The lacy sock-yarn cardigan

Now I can't even remember when I started this. I have a blurry memory of doing the edging on the eurotunnel train and I last went over to France that way years ago. decades. centuries.

This yarn is quite possibly jinxed. I knitted it into a vest first of all, but found out on sewing up that the armholes were too small for anyone who ate or was older than 5. So I frogged it all and decided to put it to use in a lacy cardigan pattern from Kim Hargreaves' Breeze book.

The lacework border took FOREVER, so once I was through with that, however ambivalent I was feeling about the design, I had to go on and see it through because there was no way I wasn't putting the endless border to use.

So, I did the back - ever so slowly - then I gathered pace and finished the left front in a week or two.

I tacked it together and at this stage disaster struck. I hadn't measured properly. It was made for a midget. Armhole problems again, and I'm not sure I know anyone who'd willingly sport a cropped-to-the-navel lacy cardigan...

So, now I just look at it and sigh. What do I do? Finish it and find a small child to bequeath it to? Finish it and stretch it defiantly on, just for the sake of it. Unknit?!?!? Try and improvise some kind of shoulder extension (I'm pretty sure I'm not technically up to this option)...

I don't know. Maybe it's time to go back to chunky scarves...