With deep regret, ribbit...

I'm going to be traveling in a few weeks (It will be warm! There will be sunshine!) so I'm trying to plan some traveling knitting. My current project, the Great and Powerful Niebling, is much too complicated for airport/airplane knitting, let alone visiting-beloved-family knitting, so I've been trying to come up with an alternative.
Of course, the urge to cast on something new is a powerful force to contend with. My queue runneth over (both on Rav and off) and I have yarn in the stash that is practically shouting at me.
But.
There are stacks of bags in my craft room, full of UFOs, that are also shouting at me. Guilt is also a powerful force to contend with. Projects that were once best beloved, now unloved, smothered in plastic bags.
I need to finish something.
Or, at least, continue something.
The one that pulls me hardest is the sweater I started with my handspun Cotswold.
The reason it ended up abandoned in a plastic bag is that my gauge swatch lied. That, and an overwhelming load of sentiment.
I cast on the sleeves just before I flew to KC in 2009 to say goodbye to my mother. I knit while I sat at her bedside, keeping vigil through the days and nights. Even when I realized that the gauge was off, that it was going to be way too large, I knit on, keeping my hands and mind busy with the soothing routine of stitch by stitch, row by row.
When I got home, I couldn't continue with it. I knew it had to be frogged, but by that time it was all tied up with the loss of my mother. There was no point in knitting on, but I couldn't face ripping it out, letting it go.
I folded the knitting gently into a plastic bag, and set it aside.

I'm ready now.

This

turned into this


turned into this


and into the water it went.

It's time. I will begin again.
Though the original stitches are gone, the yarn and the sweater will always be connected to my mother. It will be a hug from her that I can always hold in my heart.