Firing on All Cylinders

It's only Tuesday, and it's already been an incredibly long week. There's a reason I so rarely take time off from work -- I end up paying for it when I get back! Thank goodness I have knitting to help me maintain my sanity.

And there's been a good deal of knitting, though perhaps not as much as I would like. For one thing, I am getting closer to another completed pair of socks. I did manage to finish up the first one before we left Florida and promptly cast on the second, which saw some action on the plane. I'm a little more than halfway through the leg.

I've also picked up my wild self-patterned hat again (it's being worked on pretty much exclusively on the evenings I put Rain bow to bed). It's hard to tell, but the pattern is interrupted somewhere in the middle of the stockinette because I encountered a knot. The patterning is so busy, though, that I don't think anyone will be able to tell.

The main focus of my knitting time the past few days, however, has been my Quill sweater. I finally reached the point of the armhole shaping on Sunday night and managed to knit up the entirety of the left front (that sounds more impressive than it is; it's a relatively thin strip of stockinette). Last night, I tackled the back, and I'm hoping to get that done tonight.

Once the back is finished, the other front should be a breeze, and then it will be time to start the sleeves. The sleeves on this sweater are worked from the top down, with short rows to shape the sleeve caps. That's really the only tricky part; once I'm past the short-row shaping, I think the sleeve should go very quickly, as stockinette is the round does. The final challenge will be the collar, with its miles of garter stitch -- but at least that will be relatively mindless and I won't need to keep track of a chart.

I've also added some additional rows to the handspun shawl I shared last week, but it doesn't look much different, so I'll spare you another bland shot of cream-colored knitting. Once I start working in the other color, it'll start to look a lot more interesting.

On top of all this, I'm tempted to cast on some new projects, but I am holding off for the time being. I think four projects, plus spinning, is enough for right now!