I mentioned a sweater for my boy a long time ago,

and that's what I've mostly been working on. I finished the body and both sleeves up to the underarm, and joined body and sleeves together. I got about two or three inches into the yoke (total yoke depth is seven and a half inches) and ran out of yarn. That's fifteen balls of yarn, 1650 yards, 750 grams, that I've already knit. More yarn is already in the mail, and I'm letting myself rest before making that last mad dash for the finish line.

Meanwhile, a little look at my planning process. Here's the map I made up, complete with calculations (worked and re-worked) and stitch counts, a lot of which I ultimately changed in the final product. I originally intended the steek to be five stitches, but I miscalculated somewhere along the way and rather than re-knit what I had done (which was about two or three inches of the body, a whopping 295 stitches) I repurposed six stitches into the steek. It's now eleven stitches wide, which actually makes me pretty happy, since I have never steeked and I am terrified of cutting into my knitting.

The map, originally uploaded by rubychan4.

And here is the finished, washed, blocked gauge swatch. It looks cleaner, crisper and much better defined than any of the pictures (I'm sorry to say) you are going to see of the sweater.

The boy's sweater swatch, originally uploaded by rubychan4.

Here is the sweater in progress as it is now. It doesn't look like much, but it's well on its way to becoming what the boy asked for. The gauge swatch is included at the bottom for scale.

Front, originally uploaded by rubychan4.

And here is the back.

Back, originally uploaded by rubychan4.

And a close up of the back.

Back/bottom back, originally uploaded by rubychan4.

And, as a special treat, something you probably never thought you would see. A pair of Bayerische socks! I finished that first sock way back in November, and I got to the bottom of the ribbing, started the pattern stitches and realized I had miscalculated somehow and had too few stitches. And that was where it stood, until I started taking it to work with me. Between evenings at home and my breaks at work, I finished the mate in roughly a week. The toe still needs to be grafted shut and the ends need to be woven in, but the lion's share of the work is done.

Gasp TWO Bayerische socks!, originally uploaded by rubychan4.