Sweater Growing

Still here, still working on the same old sweater. I'm spending time working on my Calligraphy Cardigan just about every day; in a good evening, I can add about two inches to the body, which is not too shabby. After a productive evening at knit night last night, I'm now through three (of five) sets of increases and the body is now measuring about 12" below the underarm.

Last night I took a closer look at the schematic and pulled out the measuring tape to realize that if I knit this sweater as specified, it's going to end up covering my tush. Now, I often add length to my sweaters so that they don't ride up when I sit or bend over, but this might be a bit too long for me, so I may remove a couple of inches worth of length.

This is all related to the fact that I've reached that inevitable stage in the process of knitting a sweater: the moment when I begin to panic that I will not have enough yarn to finish. At the moment, I have two untouched skeins of yarn, and I believe that finishing the body will use the better part of the two skeins that are attached at the moment (I'm alternating skeins every two rows). Once I finish the body, I'll still have two sleeves and a total of 6 inches of 2x2 ribbing to do on the button bands. I keep reminding myself that I'm using the yarn specified in the pattern, I bought the specified number of skeins, and my gauge is off just enough to work in my favor (I'm getting just slightly fewer stitches to the inch than I should). I also had way more than enough yarn when I knit my Effortless Cardigan, which was by the same designer and in the same yarn, so chances are I'll be okay this time around, too. It's still not stopping me from knitting faster (because knitting faster makes the yarn last longer, right?).

If there's a bright side to all of this it's that it's looking very good that I'll finish this sweater by the end of the knitalong, which is the end of the month. We have a fairly uneventful weekend ahead of us, and I'd like to finish the body by the end of it.

Meanwhile, on other needles, I'm working on yet another Peckish, this time in Knit Picks Stroll (or, as I like to call it, the Yarn Formerly Known as Essential), for the KP IDP program. I haven't used the yarn in quite a while, and it's a lot softer and fluffier than I remember (though it's quite possible that it didn't used to be merino). I've been working on this primarily during my lunch breaks during the week but will have to step it up a bit soon because I've promised to get the sample back before the end of the month. I will likely take this with me when the Mister and I go on an anniversary trip the week after next; I think it will make for great airplane and waiting around knitting because I won't need to refer to a pattern.