Sweaters and snow

I woke up earlier than I would have liked this morning and drove D to his exam through several inches of slippery, slushy snow. No such thing as a snow day for a medical student!


Part of the blame for this morning being earlier than I wanted it to be was the fact that I didn't get to bed until much later than I had intended. The reason for that is best shown, not explained. See:

I finally got the body of my sweater done! Mind you, it was 12:30 AM when I finished it. I intended to go to bed closer to, oh, maybe 11:30, and when 11:30 came I decided that I would knit until midnight and then stop, but when midnight came and I was only a very short section away from being completely done with it, well...
I finished.


All that I have left to do now is knit two sleeves, block the pieces, seam them together, and finish it off with a brown i-cord edging and I'm done! The body is going to get soaked and put on my nifty blocking pads from Sam's club (Heavy-duty interlocking safety mats... :D ) today. I'm going to give a sleeve my best shot today as well, and hopefully I can get one done. Personally, I'd like to be wearing this on Thursday when I go to SSK (South-side knitters- a little group of us that meet at a coffee shop Thursday mornings). But... that might just be wishful thinking.


Last Thursday at SSK I was just starting to pick up stitches off of the cable braid across the bottom of the sweater. I needed help from some of my expert knitting friends to finish my calculations about where to make the decreases on the sides. ( I love the cable on this pattern, but I wasn't too excited about wearing a rectangle...) In the hour and a half or so that I worked on it that morning, I picked up my stitches and did about 2 rows beyond that. Not much at all. And yet my goal is to have it finished a week later at our next meeting? A knitter can dream, can't she?


A little note about the decreases I did- I made the braid according to the directions for a L sized sweater, picked up the # of stitches for a L size sweater, (216) and proceeded to make decreases on either side of where the M sized back would be, (center 96 stitches) until I had reached the # of stitches for the M size. (192) I did the decreases fairly evenly spread over the 74 rows it took me to get 15" of fabric. Then I proceeded to work the arm shaping according to the instructions for a M sized sweater. It seems to have worked quite nicely! I will be making two M sized sleeves to match the arm-hole shaping.


Enough taking about it! I must get to work! The time is slipping away from me, and I have plenty of hours to put in, both on the knitting, and a few other things around the house that need to be done. I leave you with a quote that seems fitting in light of my lofty sweater project goals: "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it, you will land among the stars"