Short-lived Monogamy

After finishing the baby sweater last week, I found myself in an unusual position for me: I had only one project on the needles. Even more unusual is that I stuck to that one project all through the weekend. I figured that it would be good to focus on the baby sweater for a few days to make some decent progress, and it has paid off.

When I've been working on this during my lunch break during the week, I've been able to complete about eight rows in a sitting (so two repeats of the stitch pattern). At that rate, it probably would have taken me several months to finish. Spending an hour or two on it at a time makes it move along much faster. As you can see, I've started working in the second skein of yarn. I quickly determined that the two I had were probably not going to be enough to make this blanket the size I wanted, so luckily I was able to pick up a third skein at my LYS this weekend. To minimize any noticeable color changes, I'm alternating the old skein and the new one over the course of several rows (working two rows in one skein, then two rows in the other). I think the new skein is close enough that it won't be too obvious, and the texture of the stitch pattern does help to break up any pooling.

So I'm nearly a third of the way done with the blanket, which is not bad in my book. Technically I don't have to have it done until around Christmas, when it will be delivered, but I don't want to leave it until the last minute and have it be a real slog.

Meanwhile, in the middle of working on the blanket over the weekend, I did take a bit of time to swatch for a sweater for me, and yesterday, I finally cast on. This is the beginning of my Window to My Soul in Tosh Merino Light:

I knew that the stitch pattern in the yoke would be a little involved, but I did not expect to have to keep track of so much at the beginning -- there are short rows almost from the get go, which is really a rather ingenious way to shape the neckline. It wasn't really hard so much as fiddly to keep having to flip back and forth between the directions and the chart; fortunately, I was able to get enough done before putting it down for the night that I can just look at the chart for the next 40 or so rows. I expect this will not be a particularly fast knit (what with the fingering weight yarn and a fairly involved stitch pattern), but it's nice to be able to spend some time on something for me amidst all the baby knitting.