Slogging

I had thought that once I got the sleeves and body of my Mad May sweater joined together it would go a lot faster, but it appears I was kidding myself. When you have rows that are nearly 300 stitches long, they take a while. I have been working on the yoke all week (I joined the pieces on Monday night) and now have the rest of the current row and one wrong side row to do before I can actually start the cable pattern.

I think that once I do start the cabling, things will go a little faster -- both because there are decreases in the pattern and because working cables serves as a great motivation to do "just one more row." There are 29 rows in the chart and then about six rows of garter stitch at the very top. I'm hoping that I can get all that done this weekend so that all that will be left to do is the button bands (and weaving in a whole lot of ends, but that's inevitable). Ideally, I'd like to have this off the needles sometime next week. I've signed up for this year's Through the Loops mystery shawl, and as the first clue is sent out June 1, I'd like to clear off some space in my WIPs before then. (I also need to do some stash digging and/or yarn shopping, but that will be a discussion for another day.)

My sock is moving somewhat slowly as well, as I've only been working on it for about 40 minutes each day during my lunch break. I finished the cuff -- with some mock cable twists in it so I can tell it apart from the other sock -- earlier in the week and have been doing nothing but plain stockinette since. I'm finding the fabric in this sock to be curiously lighter than the other, and I'm wondering if it's because of the opposing ply in the yarn or if I just happened to get the lighter spots in the fiber more in this section of yarn. The striping pattern that happened in the first sock is happening in this one, too, but it's a lot more subtle.

On top of all this, I've really been itching to sit at my wheel and get the rest of my singles done for my cabled yarn, but I've been focusing too much on my sweater. Perhaps I will sneak in some time this weekend -- after the craziness of last weekend and the running around I've been doing this week, I really need that meditative time.