I think I have safely overcome my fear of not having enough yarn to finish the Holographic Cardigan for Mom. Here's the "flat" view of the sweater with 1/2 of the first sleeve in place.

Parallel Lines

It is a testimony to how much I love my Mommy that I am willing to contend with weaving in all those different colored ends. Here's the more interesting view of the sleeve.

Checkerboard

I love doing sleeves from the top down. With even decreases every 6 rows, I am always "looking forward" to the next shaping or color changing event, plus the sleeves are narrowing. That's a good recipe for keeping my attention. I really do like the construction of this sweater so far. The only draw back is that I have a lot of wool in my lap and it's something of an effort to keep the yarn from getting tangled around extraneous ends and sweater parts. I'm going to try to be faithful to this sweater project until I get it finished, and just work on some other smaller projects when I need distraction.

Before I close, I just want to make a few quick comments about felting. Although that Bucket-O-Something that I put up yesterday does not fall into my "unqualified success category" I'm not too disturbed by that. Part of why I enjoy designing felted things is that I really do like the fact that you mix 2 parts engineering with one part biology and one part magic to get something new and different. While I wish I had a hat that looked like it was supposed to, I did learn a few things from the project (even if I forgot to include them in yesterday's post).

1. Beware felting different fiber densities in different parts of the same connected garment -- rates of felting could be different. Part of the reason that my brim is wonky is because the band uses a single strand while the brim uses a double. The next time I try, I'll stick with a single strand. If you know your stockinette is going to "roll up" then at least cast off purlwise on a right side row. Knitwise and purlwise castoffs roll in different directions.
2. Don't felt without the right tools. I should probably have had a steamer and some good cylindrical shaping form to help this project along. I am now beginning to wonder if Bonne Marie's steaming and shaping operation doesn't do a little pre-felting of the fabric that means she gets better results when she heads to the washing machine.

And if you want to see a fantabulous Bucket, check out Bonne Marie's latest. Wow! I gotta get me some of that!

Countdown to Columbus... 3 days!