A Series of Tubes

I am so very close to finishing up my Evenlight. I returned to it Sunday night and managed to finish up the first sleeve last night. Before starting the second, I even wove in all my ends. I'm now well on my way on the second sleeve, and if all goes according to plan, the sweater should be done by this weekend -- a good thing, too, because it's supposed to be rather chilly and I might just want to wear a sweater.

I did end up having to buy a third skein of yarn, and luckily my LYS had one more in stock from the same lot as the original two skeins. For the sleeves, I've been alternating the new skein with what was left of one of the originals after I finished the body. There was only a tiny amount leftover from one of those when I finished the first sleeve, so I should be using up nearly all of the original skeins. While I'm sure I can make good use of what's left of the third skein, I am a little bummed that I had to buy more, especially when you consider that I had more than what the pattern specified to begin with. But I guess it happens, and in this case it all worked out okay.

In other projects, I've nearly finished the first of my pink striped socks, which got most of my attention the last couple of days we were away. I've only been working on them during my lunch break at work, so progress has slowed a bit, but I expect the first one at least to be done shortly.

Usually I don't worry so much about stripes matching, but I'm going to try to match up this pair, especially because the striping sequence worked out so nicely with the heel. I was really hoping that I wouldn't get the odd one or two rows of a different color on the instep, and it worked out better than I hoped. The stripe sequence in this yarn is short enough that I shouldn't have an issue with having enough yarn if I wind off some to get to the same starting point for the second sock; the last time I used this yarn (following my same generic sock recipe), I used less than 350 yards of the 400 yard skein.

I haven't forgotten about my handspun Hitofude; it is waiting patiently until the other sweater is finished. Considering that it's a lightweight sweater, I'm not in any rush to finish it right now. The Gradient-along technically finishes up at the end of June, and I think another three months should be plenty of time to get it done as long as I work on it regularly.