Sweater Progress

Yes, I am still working on the sweater! However, the same thing that always happens to me at this time of the year is happening right now: I want to knit spring and summer stuff, not sweaters!! Still, we have cool weather and are expecting a cool down next week, so I have plenty of opportunities to wear a sweater, if I can just finish it.

The body of the sweater is finished, so I only have to knit the sleeves and the neck. This seems like a easy task, but, if you've ever knit a sweater before, you know that the sleeves can seem endless! I don't know why; they have a fraction of the number of stitches as the body of the sweater, and yet... they seem to take forever.

At any rate, these are set in, short row sleeves. I have done short rows before, with wraps and turns, but I haven't done them on the purl side, so that was new. For these sleeves, you have to pick up a certain number of stitches, place a marker, pick up more, place a marker, etc., and you have to pick up the same number of stitches on either side of the sleeve. This sounded sort of tricky to me, but I jumped in. On my first attempt, I ran out of room before I had picked up the required number of stitches. Ripped that out. Second attempt, I sort of "made it work." It looked pretty good, not perfect, but I was eager to move forward, so I deemed it "good enough." Never a good idea!

I worked all of the short rows, joined for worked in the round and then stopped to admire my work. Ug. Not pretty. It was a bit uneven. There were loose spots where I had picked up stitches. Some of my purl wraps were clearly wrong, so there were some weird crossed stitches in some parts. Reluctantly, I ripped it out.

I set it aside for a while, but quickly decided to try again. Picked up the stitches nice and evenly. Worked the short row wraps carefully... success!! I am now "speeding" down the arm of sleeve number one!

In other knitting news, I am about to turn the heel on Mike's tabi sock, which looks huge to me, but he tried it on and it fits him quite well.

I also knit up these baby booties, but still have to sew the seams. A friend is newly pregnant and doesn't know if it's a girl or a boy. However, I had this lovely organic cotton yarn sitting in my stash and it just happens to be blue. Girls can wear blue, too, right? Light blue. Pastel. Barely blue. Maybe I could add pink pompoms if it turns out to be a girl?