Discover Your Inner Knitter with Doris: What's on my needles (week 71)

Knitting Lesson # ? : Persistence helps you reach your Goal.

Jim calls this his non-smoker's smoking jacket

Jim in his finished cardigan

Although it is a little too warm to wear right now, it was the perfect timing for Jim to receive the cardigan. One of them to congratulate him on new ventures in his business E A Content Services.

Have you ever had a project you did not feel too inspired to do, but felt compelled to do anyway and were glad you did? Here is my story on just such a project.

I have to go back in time to start this story.
Do you remember when my friend Marie passed away two summers ago and all her yarns were donated to two of the local libraries (Red Hook and Tivoli)?
Some yarn was immediately used to make Chemo Blankets. You can read about this in a post from October 2013: http://knitwithdoris.blogspot.com/2013/10/chemo-blankets.html

One year later the Tivoli Library decided to sell some of the yarns to make monetary donations to the Cancer Center. This is when I received the yarn and pattern in a kit for a Shawl which I call "Gift from Heaven". There are several blog posts about this incredible story... Here is the one which features the finished shawl; http://knitwithdoris.blogspot.com/2014/09/whats-on-my-needles-week-33.html
And my notes on ravelry: http://ravel.me/Strickliese/ss2

Now forward to a few months after that which brings us to Fall 2014. Hildegard and Bonny, again from the Tivoli Library, approached me with a half finished cardigan which was in Marie's stash. Obviously she had started to knit a cardigan for her husband Jim. The back was done, and so was the right front. The left front was partially done. There was enough yarn to finish the project and the pattern was there. Of course I volunteered to finish this.

The pattern came in two photocopied pages; possibly from a book. Unfortunately I was not able to find the source of the pattern

Hildegard, Bonnie and I with the finished sweater at the Tivoli Library

It took me a while to get started. After all, this was not just something Marie had bought, but never started, but this was something she had actually worked on. Aside from feeling rather emotional about this (but some times in a good way as in feeling connected), I had to also try and match her gauge and figure out some changes she had made to the right front. After all the two fronts needed to match.
Beginning of this year I decided that this would be one of the projects I wanted to finish. There were a few other things I had promised to work on, but in March I started to work on the cardigan. I decided that on the days I was home I would not knit anything else until after I spent one hour on this project. Then I was disciplined enough to stick to this and 35 hours later I was sewing on the last button!
The lesson I learned is that you can finish anything if you just do a little each day consistently.