Maybe I don't have as many UFOs as I once believed. While looking online for a way to find new homes for my UFOs, I came across a UFO Challenge on stashbuster.com. Their UFO's all had to be quilty--requiring some form of quilting in order to count. But since I do other sewing, I have to broaden my category to include sewing projects, and the occasional knitting or crafting project (beading? rug hooking? paper-related scrappy-things?)
So that expands my list of UFO/projects. Longer list, darn. However, I don't have to include projects I am currently working on, making progress toward completing, no matter how slowly that goes. (Those are WIPs, right? They don't add to the UFO total count.) I also don't have to include things that, at the moment, are just some fabric and an idea/pattern. If I haven't actually started cutting, that idea is not a UFO. This shortens my list dramatically. Apparently, I already count my ideas as projects to which I am committed. (I may need to unpack this "committed in my mind" idea; it could go a long way to describing how my mind attaches itself to things.)
Really, then, UFO's are those things that I've abandoned in some state of unfinished-ness: the sad sock knitting project that is stopped at the tricky heel-turn; the children's play quilt that requires actual quilting, and finishing of the many tiny stuffed-toy portions of the scene (originally started when my adult offspring were children); the wedding dress that has been disassembled and partially reassembled into a pillow.
My UFOs: alone and forlorn, like the Island of Misfit Toys from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Using this definition, I want to go count/list my UFOs, so I know my "starting number" for 2012. This year is about having less stuff, so that number should be *lower* at the end of the year than the beginning. Whether through completing some UFOs, or sending them on to new and loving homes (or off into dark oblivion, in some cases) THEY MUST GO.
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