-Trumpet Fanfare-

Aaaaaaall done! Blocking on my living room floor. Finished it this morning, now it's just the waiting game for it to dry. Yes, it's a *cough* couple days later than my intended goal. Funny story, though. About as soon as I published my last post, Kyle came home from work. I told him my brilliant plan of staying up all night to finish the blanket even though I didn't need it done until later. Yeah, no, I don't think so. By around 1-1:30, I didn't need much convincing to go to bed. But don't worry! I was still a sleepy wreck the next day, as Cirilia can attest to. Ah well, such is life.

But now that I've gotten this sucker finally done, I'm on to my next hare-brained scheme! Start and finish this sweater:

Before my long weekend's over. It's out of Artful Yarns Celebrity, bought at a ridiculously low blow-out price at Webs, of course. Got the last 7 balls of this color, which I've always secretly enjoyed. So not too much yardage to work with. Solution: elongated stitches and alternating the sections I work on to get an even distribution of what little yarn I have. This is all one ball! I can hardly believe it myself. Yeah, the raglan looks heinously skimpy in this picture, but I'm working an elongated garter st every right side row, so those rows really stretch out lengthwise or even widthwise, depending. Technically the gauge is 3 per inch, but with this much stretch, all bets are off. And yes, that sleeve is worked in rows and will have to be sewn. I feel like such a top down Judas. But it was just too nutty to make the narrow little sleeves in the round with this strange yarn flopping everywhere. And with such large rows, it shouldn't be too much of a hassle. One of the things I'm really liking about this stitch (wrapping the yarn twice for every stitch on the rs rows, knitting straight across the ws rows, dropping off the extra loops) is how the increases work. Just don't drop off that extra loop! Knit into the back of the second loop, or purl it, or whatever, to keep it "valid" in the appropriate places et voila! A raglan sleeve.

Plans are to make it half or 3/4 sleeve, pretty cropped, single-button cardigan with a big, black, interesting button to make it all work. And I intend to wear it to work Tuesday when I come back. =) Let's see.