week six

The sweater, she grows! It's not looking that impressive at the moment, but how does one take a good picture of a partially finished sweater? I am pretty impressed with how quickly progress has been coming along. I don't work on it every day, but when I do find myself knitting away I spend a lot of time with it. I'm pleased to have gotten past the short row hem shaping - no more purls, yay! - and onto the simpler stockinette in the round. 

I've also reached the point of adding in the second color. It's sneaking in right now, just a row here and a row there. I've come up with a clever way to track the decrease rows and the color changes at the same time. For decreases I move a second stitch marker one stitch away from the beginning of row marker for each row between decreases. Once I get to the decrease row I start over at one stitch, then I mark another tally down in the pattern to keep track of how many repeats I've done. For the colors, I just have the number of rows of dark/medium/light written down in a list that I mark off as I go. It's easy enough to count five, eight, thirteen, rows of a stripe so I just knit until I think I'm getting close to the right thickness then count. It requires a bit of thinking as I go along but not too much, so I still get to watch TV or listen to music while working. 

I'm curious to see how I tackle the sleeves. I guess one at a time, but wouldn't it be nice to be able to do two at once?? I think it's possible. Must do some reading.