I had an interesting conversation with Shireen yesterday that made me stop and think.  I mentioned that I was battling a severe case of start-itis, and that the main reason I was not casting on a new Trillian was because I already have three scarves on needles, never mind the two sock designs that I started but have left languishing of late.  I said that “I had other things I should be working on”.

Shireen responded to the effect of  “that there’s where I went wrong…crafting has become something I should be doing and not always what I want to be doing.” (I am paraphrasing here.)

And I realized that somewhere along the line, I seem to have strayed into that mindset.  I think that (for me) it’s that I promise someone I will make them something, and then I feel guilty if I do anything else.  I just finished socks for my husband (which have inadvertently turned into a free pattern I am now writing up) and I have promised my mom a fingering weight scarf that I am less than halfway through.  By the time you factor in the other half-completed projects that I somehow feel guilty about letting sit in project bags, I feel rather like a Catholic school girl in confession.

I frogged a couple of those WIPs already and I keep looking at the others on my project page, wondering idly “If it’s been on needles for 18 months, am I ever really going to finish it?”

Does it “bother” you to have multiple projects on needles?  Or are you the type that never does?  (My girlfriend, Caryn, somehow never seems to have more than two or three things on the go at any point, and not shockingly, actually seems to finish things.)  If it does bother you, what’s your solution?  Do you buckle down and finish them?  Or frog them and move on?  Do you have an arbitrary time frame in which you know that if it doesn’t get finished, it never will?

Inquiring minds want to know.