Round and Round I Go

The end is finally in sight on my Airflow. I finished the first sleeve on Tuesday evening, and last night I spent a good 45 minutes weaving in ends before I picked up the stitches for the second sleeve and started working on it. I've gotten through one set of decreases and have three sets left to do before I get to the point where I knit round after round until the sleeve is long enough.

Theoretically, this should be the fastest part of the sweater. Once the decreases are done, there's no shaping to do, so I can just knit and knit without thinking. Of course, there's still the wrangling of the two skeins of yarn at the beginning of every round, but I've got a system down that seems to be working pretty well. Yet, for some reason, this knitting is among the most tedious of the whole sweater. Doing short sleeves would have been an obvious solution to avoid this tedium, but a short-sleeved sweater doesn't do me much good. The only real solution is to just keep knitting, and I know that the sweater will be done soon enough. Although I've already passed the 5K mark for Stash Dash, it would be nice to be able to add the yarn from this project to my total before the event wraps up next weekend.

Meanwhile, my shawl is growing, and I'm really liking how it's knitting up.

This yarn has been surprising me with its fuzziness. I suppose when you're used to spinning and knitting with smooth worsted yarns, it is a bit different to work with a yarn spun from a woolen prep. The finished shawl will be very cozy when it's done -- perfect for wrapping up in this winter. I'm now considering what yarn I should use for the pattern sample and pondering whether I can stash dive or if I need to go yarn shopping. I think this would look nice in something hand painted and perhaps even a little variegated. A semisolid would definitely work as well. I'm open to suggestions!