the fronts, and beyond!

I cast on for the fronts of my husband’s sweater last Saturday, so that I could knit on them on the drive to and from the Fiber Festival. Considering how busy my schedule is these days, I’m quite happy with the progress I’ve made. Here’s a picture I took on Monday:

And since then, thanks to my habit of knitting on the evenings when I’m home while I watch the news, I’ve knit even more…I have 10.5 of the 14.25 inches I need before I start the armholes! I’m hoping that by the end of the weekend, I can have finished the fronts. We’ll see! Once I finish the fronts, I want to put the body of the sweater together, because I’m thinking I might like to try picking up stitches from the armhole and knitting the sleeves down from the top. I’ve never tried it before, but I do have Barbara Walker’s “Knitting from the Top” in my knitting book arsenal, so I think it would be a great time to give it a shot.

I think I’ve talked about this here already, but in any case, as you might’ve noticed if you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, I’ve started being more “monogamous” in my knitting projects. I still have multiple things on the needles, but I’ve been doing a much better job of prioritizing my works-in-progress, and I have only one truly active project at home (right now, my husband’s sweater), and one at the office (a sock). It’s working out really well…it’s easier to actually make progress on a project when it’s not competing with 5 other projects for your attention, and I actually think something about thinking about my projects more “one at a time” is helping me stick to my “no new yarn” goal (new stuff seems less enticing when I know I have lots of new things already waiting for me here at home, that I don’t want to start until I finish something else).

Once I finish my husband’s sweater, I’d like to finish up my Bog Jacket (remember that one?). Next up, I think, will be a scarf for my mother, out of the leftovers from my Icarus shawl. I’ve chosen Miriam Felton’s Flutter Scarf, which I think will look incredible in the yarn I used for my shawl. My other priorities for the rest of the year, knitting-wise, are to try to knit another cardigan for myself (I always wish I had more cardigans; there’s so much temperature variability in the rooms I have to be in on campus), and to put in some more work on the Escher mittens I started for my dad. I’d really love to get one knit up, so that I can write up a pattern…it’s just that working a complicated, self-designed colorwork pattern on size 00 needles isn’t usually the thing I want to do after I get home from the office. We’ll see what happens. I’m sure a few smaller projects (socks, wristwarmers, cowls) will sneak in there, too.

Right now, I think I am going to get my blocking wires out again, and block my Chevron Scarf. I never did block the poor crumply thing last year, but have been wearing it nonetheless. I’d like to neaten it up just a little bit, now that I’ve got the appropriate tools!