From a blogpost about long term UFOs in January 2012:

At a craft show a few years ago I picked up a little book called Domino Knitting by Vivian Hoxbro. (In fact one of the things I consistently by at craft shows is books). I made a cushion cover as a test piece.

This then led to the domino shawl / wrap. This was inspired by the wool which was a birthday present. The photos don’t really do it justice. The three colours: a brown with a blue thread through it, a grey marl and a black all have metallic gold and silver threads through them. I’m not sure how big this will be as I haven’t really got a handle on how far the wool will go.

This has been in timeout for a very long time. (It looks to be at the same point of progress as it was in its last known photograph from January 2012. The last conscious memory I have of knitting on this is at a rehearsal for an end of year ballet concert and I haven’t had a child who danced since 2010 or so…). In one of my stash busting groups, someone suggested spending 10 minutes with a UFO at a time as a finish strategy. So, on New Years Eve 2014, I finally made it a Ravelry pattern page and dug out the book and had a little read to isolate the pattern I used. Turned out I didn’t really use a pattern but it is a 29 stitch garter mitre square and 15 stitch left and right leaning triangles. I checked the needle size with a needle gauge - 4 mm dpns.

On the evening of the 10th of January, I picked it up to spend 10 minutes communing with it. I worked out where I was pattern and began finishing the current square. I got in the flow and 2 and a bit hours later, I was four squares down and almost finished the triangle at the top of the strip. I realized that I still like this as a knitting challenge and so it’s back in rotation. (I also realized why it keeps going in timeout too. I don’t really like the yarn to knit with. It’s splitty, easy to accidentally pull a single strand and gets all bunchy as you knit. It is manageable though).

Also got some love as the last weeks collection of cast ons for the February COM in VHOC. It’s moving along really well. I can see light at the end of the tunnel. (Unfortunately, I can also see the wool running out faster than I want it too!)

And then it hibernated again…
Oh, not totally back into the back of the cupboard, hibernation. Hibernation in the basket in the lounge. Every time I tried WIP wrestling, it made the list and got maybe a square done. We acquired a puppy in August. It could not resist the sparkly yarn on cardboard cones. The yarn made some unscheduled excursions in the puppy’s mouth around chair legs, under the table and off into the back yard. However, the puppy did not actually chew the yarn, just unravel it and nibble on the cardboard cones.

And then we hit crisis point. I knew I wasn’t going to have enough brown to finish the pattern as set. I dithered, debated and made and discarded several plans on how to deal with this. In the end, I decided to save the brown I had to finish the triangles along the edge and fill in the rest using the two different blacks, trying to maintain the columns where possible. It sort of offends me to ruin the pattern but I also want it finished.

The project got a new name: Descent in Chaos.

I finally finished it part of September 2015 COM in VHOC - a few rows or a square or several squares a day. A little bit of sewing ends in as a I went. I made it before the yarn ran out - almost!! I have about 2 m of brown left and about 4 m of the black. I needed to do one last square in the black. I didn’t have enough yarn. So I dragged a ball of sparkly black acrylic out of the stash and did the last square. It’s kinda like the Amish do with their patchwork quilts - make a deliberate mistake because only God is perfect. In this case, geometry degenerated into chaos, symmetry into randomness.

I’m just a bit miffed with the whole running out of yarn thing…

But things I am proud of:

1. I finished it! I think this is my longest running WIP and it is finished finally!
2. You can’t tell this was knitted over the space of around 10 years even before blocking. My knitting tension hasn’t changed. (I’m secretly proud of being that consistent!
3. See also No. 1 (several times). I’m glad I gave a UFO life.

No idea what I’m going to do with it now though…