Sweaters that Haunt Me.....

Maybe I should have saved this for Halloween, but I wanted to exercise some demons. I have been knitting since February of 2005 or so, and have completed 2 sweaters. Skully from the Stitch-n-Bitch book, and Martha from the Rowan Cork Collection pattern book. Skully killed me a bit, mostly because I was new to knitting when I started it and I thought that knitting with wool & mohair was a rational way of spending some time over the summer. I had to rip out each sleeve 2ce and also the bottom of the back once (I now pay way more attention to row count). Overall though, it was a good experience, and I am really proud of that sweater. The second, Martha, was completed for the knitting olympics and so was done in 16 days. I procrastinated a bit with Skully, but by and large they were both done in a pretty quick timeframe.

Then came the Manly Sweater. My DH wanted a sweater, and I like to make him happy. Because he's cute and sweet and all that good stuff. He deserves a sweater. However, I didn't realize what a commitment this was going to be. He is around a 54 inch chest and is 6'4". That's a lot of knitting. Also, he is not all that interested in color. It took me awhile to even talk him into allowing me to do a little stripe just to break the monotony. I started this sweater around early spring of this year. I was doing pretty well on it, and then I just hit a stretch of apathy. It has looked like this for four months:
How ridiculous is that? One more seam. I also have to rip the sleeves back a bit so that I can add a ribbed cuff, but one seam will make this into a functional sweater. What's my deal? Is it the complete overload of grey? Miles and miles of grey, oh my?

But if monotomy is my excuse for Manly sweater procrastination, then what is up with the second sweater that I have hit a stand-still on? This one is Erin from Hot Knits. I just loved the whole idea of this one. It had the sort of rainbowy thing that (as demonstrated in my last post) i have an issue with and because it was fair isle, I could use up some stash. So, this is what it has looked like for the past 4 months:

The sleeve is actually a giant gauge swatch. I have to redo it because the fair isle at the bottom of the sleeve is too tight, which I remedied on the body. I converted the pattern to in the round, which now I''m not sure was a good idea, but it definitely made for easier fair isle and weaving in as you go. I just can't bring myself to pick it back up. Why? I love the yarns that I am using, and there is an end in sight. And look at that fair isle:What a fun pattern! And yet-the thought of picking it back up makes me want to lie in the fetal and eat lots of chocolate. I think I need a WIP support group. A cheerleader mayhap, who will come over and use positive reinforcement techniques with chocolate rewards as I inch closer to the sweater...and slowly pick up the needles....and knit my first few stitches. Oh, and the chocolate has to have zero calories so I don't outgrow the sweater before I finish it. That's reasonable isn't it?

Hopefully going public with this will give me the push to pick up those needles again with these sweaters. I have been knitting other things in the mean time (which is for another post), but I am not allowing myself to start another sweater until I have these done.

How do you make yourself finish WIPs?