Focusing on the Finish Line

Last week I was happily working along on the green sweater when I saw another blogger posting about the Ravellenic Games. Immediately I wanted to set greeny aside and cast on a new sweater with the lofty hopes of finishing it in two weeks. My husband knows me very well and knows that at the end of the two weeks I'd have another WIP and would be upset with myself for not meeting the impossible goal. He gently reminded me that I have several projects on the verge of being done and questioned if this really was the best time to start a new sweater. As usual he was right and inspired me to set my own goal. In the next two weeks I will focus on finishing everything that is close to being finished. It won't count towards any competitions, but it's still a good goal.

Writer's Block is still patiently waiting for binding. I also got two tops back from my quilter so now there are three quilts that need binding and labels.

In addition to finishing the green sweater I also need to finish the button band on the brown blob (I ordered more yarn when I ordered buttons for greeny.) I need to finish sewing the ribbon onto the steeked part of the purple monster and add buttons. (I also might need to find a solution to loosening the wrists. The color work on the cuffs have made it so that the sleeves aren't comfortable.) The last thing on the list of things to be finished are my fingerless gloves.

These aren't all of my WIPs. (You'll notice the mystery quilt is no where to be seen.) These are just the projects that are one or two steps away from being finished. Last summer my husband helped me wind up my yarn mountain. The light blue yarn in the mountain is going into the fingerless gloves, the yellow yarn became Omelet (I should probably add a photo shoot of Omelet to my list of things to do in the next two weeks.) The brown yarn became a hat I made for my husband for Christmas, which leave the blue yarn at the base of the mountain. When I finish with this list I get to cast the blue yarn on for Anne's Cardigan.

Sleeves

I'm not sure why this amazes me since it tends to happen with every sweater. I moan and groan about the first sleeve and how much I hate sleeves, procrastinate as much as possible, and then when I finally finish the first sleeve and cast on for the second one things start flying. This weekend I actually finished the first sleeve.

Two days and one skein later I'm half way finished with the second sleeve. I'm not even worrying about the fact that this is my last undamaged skein of yarn (the other one got cut a little when opening the box) and even counting the damaged one and the half that's left from the first sleeve I only have two and a half skeins of yarn to finish this sweater. I've been floating back and forth, but right now I think I just might make it.

Sweater Sleeves and Peeps

 Immediately after finishing last week's entry I realized my dreams of ripping back to the cuff just weren't going to cut it and I ripped the whole sleeve. Really annoying, but I'm very glad that I did it. I'm so much happier with how things are looking this time.

I've been doing a loop for my increases instead of lifting the bar below and it's been working beautifully. I love how nicely and evenly everything is branching off. It took me a few days to really get back to the sleeve but I'm a lot happier with it now which means progress is going a lot faster.

 A few weeks ago I wrote about the Halloween box my mother-in-law sent me. (It was a wonderful day when a box of fabric and a box of Halloween candy arrived at the same time.) At the time I hadn't broken into the Halloween peeps that were in the candy box so I wasn't able to share a picture. I can now happily report that the peeps have been opened and enjoyed, but before devouring this cute little guy I was able to get a quick picture. You can see how he could push the Halloween box into the lead for excitement levels.

Predictable Progress

As predicted the sweater sleeve has experienced a frogging. I was able to save the first three inches so it wasn't quite as painful as I anticipated it being. I'm not sure what I did but if you look closely about half way down the sleeve on the left side there's a wonky bit. It doesn't look too horrible in the picture, but it was very wonky in person. I was hoping that it would get better as I worked, but every round the wonkiness became more and more obvious.

I also noticed the the increases I was using were leaving large holes in my knitting. This is the first piece where I've ever had to do increases on a purl row. My preferred increase is to knit in the front and back of the stitch and if the pattern doesn't let me do that I lift the bar between two stitches and knit (or in this case purl) into the bar. For some odd reason the lifted bars left big holes this time. I'm still pretty sure that it should work knitting this sleeve in the round. Hopefully next week I'll have better progress to report.

Sweater in a month?

I've read in years past about knitters who commit to knitting an entire sweater, start to finish, in the month of November. This crazy event has been dubbed NaNoSweMo or National Sweater Knitting Month. It's the knitting response to NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month where participants are encouraged to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. I've always thought it would be fun to participate in, but never thought I'd actually be able to do it. This week as I cast on the left front of this cardigan I realized that it's entirely possible I will finish this sweater in 30 days. That said, I probably won't. I have no intention of pushing myself hard to finish this by October 25 (a month from when the sweater showed up on my blog) or by October 31. If I really intended to finish this sweater in a month I needed to commit to that before starting. 

Shaker Cardigan

That said there is still a crazy little voice in my head telling me I can finish the brown blob by Halloween and I have a lovely blue yarn in my stash waiting to become a cardigan that could be knit up in a month. Must keep reminding myself that this sweater is only the first Christmas gift on the list, another sweater is not on the list and cannot be on the list, and there are still lots of little projects left to knit. I also have to keep reminding myself of my promise to the green sweater that she would get finished. I'm really hopeful that I can dedicate November knitting to all of the little Christmas projects and then in December I can work on the green sweater as a Christmas present for myself.

Distractions

This week my sweater is not as far as I wish it was. Saturday I had the opportunity to go to Des Moines for the AQS Quilt Show. We left at 6 in the morning and didn't get back until 11 at night. Not much knitting time, but the inspiration I got from all of the quilts was worth it. Sunday I curled up with Round Robin by Jennifer Chiaverini. I intended to just read a chapter or two, but it was so good I ended up reading the whole book. I have a quilt I need to get ready for a workshop I'm taking at the end of this month so I'm not making promises as to how much knitting will get done this week either. (This is the real reason that I start knitting for Christmas in September. I have time to get distracted by other projects and still stand a decent chance of having presents finished by the 25th.)

Waiting until morning

Saturday I was happily working away at the brown blob. Close to bedtime I looked down and four rows back I somehow switched my pattern and ended up with about four inches of purls on the left side.

I told my husband I'd see how things looked in the morning. His loving response, "What do you mean you'll see how it looks in the morning? It will still be wrong." Sadly he was correct, the sweater was still wrong in the morning. However in the morning I had remembered the whole trick of dropping a stitch down row by row and using a crochet hook to bring it back up the right way. It was annoying, but far less painful than frogging four rows of knitting. Sunday afternoon I finished up the back of the sweater.

I cast on for the right side of the cardigan. Three inches later I remembered that the k1p1 rib includes a knit stitch at the start and end of the row before the k1p1 rib. Thankfully this sweater is going really fast so it was only an hour or so later that I had the second piece set up properly and began working the Shaker Rib.

*http://www.ravelry.com/projects/kymberly/shaker-cardigan