Right On Track

Many thanks to those of you who commented on, favorited, and queued Ellyce -- and a huge thank-you to those of you who have bought the pattern! I never expected such love for something that basically started out as a selfish act (designing a sweater that I wanted to wear but couldn't find a pattern for).

I finally had a chance to give my mom her finished Ellyce yesterday, and I think she liked it!

Now that all the final work I needed to do to get the pattern ready for publication is done and behind me, I've been able to spend my evenings actually knitting again (thankfully, because my stressed-out brain much prefers knitting to crunching numbers). Even though I didn't plan it this way, I am on track to finish a sweater a month this year, assuming I can keep up my pace. I started my Vitamin D only a week ago and it's flying off the needles. I'm already more than halfway through the first set of short rows on the body.

The pattern directs you to work the sleeves flat after you divide those stitches from the body (which makes sense, because the rest of the sweater is worked flat and gauge can change from flat to in the round), but I didn't want to have to sew up any seams, so I put those stitches on waste yarn, cast on stitches for the underarms, and proceeded with the body. Yes, it can be a bit cumbersome to have to deal with the weight of the body when you're knitting sleeves, but sleeves are much faster for me, so I'd rather get the long, more complicated body rows out of the way first. Last night I also broke into my second skein of yarn, which means I've already knit 400 yards' worth. Not bad!

I am anxious to finish this by the end of the month because I am planning on knitting another sweater -- the Gnarled Oak Cardigan from Coastal Knits -- in Tosh DK next month for the Madelinetosh Lovers group's annual Mad May knitalong. I know that I'm capable of getting a sweater done in a month now, and it shouldn't be a problem considering how much knitting time I'll get in over the trip down to MDSW!