Return of the Pink Blob

I didn't post yesterday because I didn't have much spinning progress to show you. I'm still working on my sock yarn experiment, and I'm on the second "big" bobbin (it's a bit confusing to explain how I'm splitting it up, though I'll try once I have a visual of all the singles spun up). I put in another hour and a half or so last night while I watched a DVD, and I'm nearly done with this bobbin's worth of fiber.

The real progress has been made on my mom's sweater. As I mentioned last week, I had Friday off, so I spent the bulk of it knitting and chatting with my friends who staff my LYS. By the time I left, I had finished the body through the pleats to where I could put those stitches on waste yarn. I took the evening off (lately my Friday nights have been spinning nights), then tackled picking up all the stitches for the front bands/neckline on Saturday.

I photograph badly in all light, and especially with a flash!

After working on the thing during every moment I could over the weekend, I find myself just a handful of rows from finishing this section. I should be able to take care of that tonight, which means I'll be starting the sleeves by tomorrow. If I can keep up the pace, I might even have a finished sweater by the weekend!

The other good news is that the pattern is nearly done, too. Although my test knitters have run into some snags that have slowed them down a bit and necessitated a small deadline extension (several of them missed a key word in the original instructions, so I've rewritten that section to make sure there's no ambiguity), I've gotten the pattern as updated as it can be and sent it off to the tech editor for a last look. Ideally I would have liked to have released the pattern this month, as it's still enough like winter to think about sweaters, but I'd rather make sure everything is correct than rush things to meet a self-imposed deadline. I know that in my climate I'm still going to be needing sweaters for another month or so, even as my second layer rather than a coat -- after all, we had snow and freezing rain/sleet today! Next time I design a sweater, though, I'm going to start it in the summer so it'll be ready by the fall!

My urge to knit sweaters also hasn't worn off. I may or may not have purchased another sweater's worth of tosh dk at my LYS on Saturday. (Okay, I did. I admit it.) I was absolutely entranced by the colorway Forestry when I spotted it on Friday, but I didn't have a pattern in mind for it and had to do some queue searching. I told myself that if it was still there on Saturday and I could find an appropriate pattern, I'd buy it -- and it was and I did. Once I finish my mom's sweater, I'll start swatching for a Gnarled Oak Cardigan. There are several Coastal Knits sweaters that I've been wanting to knit, but this one just begged to be knit in a vibrant green. It will likely not be sweater weather by the time I finish, but I figure it'll be nice to have some new things to wear come fall!