Oh. Well. That Makes Sense.
I've just this moment figured out why I've been dragging my feet on the dragonskin sweater, and of course it has to do with a piece of information I've had all along.
See, I have this notebook...well, actually I have lots of notebooks, because something about notebooks makes me happy. But there's this one particular one which was my main notebook--it's got stuff like my bike-riding tallies (I keep track to make sure I get enough rides per week), and the hash marks for row counts from my pairs of alpaca socks, and--this being the important part--all the design notes and in-progress notes for the dragonskin sweater. Problem is, I can't find it.
There are two or three places in the house that I usually put projects in, and the notebook's not in any of them. I don't think I left it at a coffeeshop, but of course that's not outside the realm of possibility. And since it has all the dragonskin notes in, if I want to work on dragonskin again I have to recreate everything, including all the clever little tricks I did, which I wrote down because otherwise it'd be hard to remember them. This is, how you say, discouraging. Which is why I haven't wanted to work on it.