This is not actually hibernating, but sometimes I pull up my project page in front of Jonathan, and I can’t have it sitting at the top there. Anywho, I’m going along at as fast a clip as I can while doing it in secret, which has varied between 220 yards in 2 days and 220 yards in 5 days…but we’re having a grand old go at it - the deadline is Nov. 29.

Not actually working from the pattern, just eyeballing it from the photos (sorry Jared Flood!). It’s going quickly; I’m working on my speed knitting.

10/21 - cast on at work…I planned to come in early to start this, so I showed up at 9:30. Except I wasn’t supposed to start at 10, but at 12! 2 extra hours of knitting time for the win!

10/23 - yesterday I was at work, and then got stuck in subway diversion hell, whereby the subway was replaced by shuttlebuses for the entire downtown section of town and most of Cambridge, from Broadway to Harvard. Bad news is that my 55 minute commute home took over 2.5 hours. Good news is, I had my sweater with me! Bonus knitting time! Almost done with the first ball of yarn (just a few yards to go).

10/30 - a week and a few days in, and I just joined in the second ball of yarn. Very little knitting on this happens mid-week, as I’m foolishly trying to knit it completely in secret (after the blue sweater last year, I swore up and down that I wouldn’t do a secret sweater).

Something about interminable miles of stockinette makes me start trying to calculate my stitches per minute, and my number of stitches left in the sweater, to estimate how many hours (days? weeks?) I have left at any given time. I’m happy to say that my knitting has sped up significantly since 2009 when I was working on my Tangled Yoke Cardigan, and was clocking around 25-30 stitches a minute. These days (and on these needles - I imagine this makes a big difference) I can go for small numbers of stitches at 65 or even 70 stitches/minute, but the shuffling of stitches around on the 36” circular slows me down big time, so I can only maintain an average of about 45 over any extended period.

So, if my rounds are 195 sts, and I’m getting 8 rounds/in, and I’m at 15” deep but want to get to 19” before hitting the underarms, then I’ve got about 2 hours and 20 minutes of uninterrupted knitting to go. Well heck, I just need to get stuck in Saturday night traffic again!

11/1 - We’re at about 18” from the cast-on edge, so my goal today is to get this last inch done sometime today so that tomorrow at work I can start up the sleeves. Contrary to preference, I’ll work these one-at-a-time, so that I only have one skein attached to the project at a time and so it breaks down into smaller chunks. They’ll feel like they’re going faster, too…I think.

11/2 - Body done. Sleeve 1 cast on and ribbing done. I did 20 rows of ribbing on size 5s instead of the 6s I’ve been working with, because I don’t like floppy cuffs, but I did want enough stitches that the sleeves be push-up-able.

11/17 - Both sleeves done as of this afternoon. Tomorrow I’ll combine it all up and start working the yoke and collar opening, which means that tonight I should do some math and make sure that the raglans are set to do what I want them to, and that I have a good sense of what the collar opening should be doing as well. Due date is 12 days away, but several of those are days which I’m spending with Jonathan (Thanksgiving), so really, I need to get as much done tomorrow and Saturday as possible. We’ll see what happens.

11/22/11 - one week and counting! But, the sweater is in great shape - I just kitchenered together the armpits, and picked up the stitches for the collar, so now it’s just knitting on the collar, weaving in ends, and deciding on the closures (I can’t find the toggles I want! Windsor Button let me down!).

This has been a charmed sweater. The raglans worked out just right. I knit the sleeves to EXACTLY the same length, with the same number of increases per, following a slightly irregular increase pattern of L-RINCs and L-LINCs. I picked up the stitches along the collar, picking up 3 stitches to 4 rows on the vertical bits and every stitch on the bound-off collar (bound off to hold its shape better), and the number I got? 150 exactly. Which makes for a really nice 2x2 ribbing with 2 seam stitches.

I was almost late for work today because I lost track of time working on this project (but again, charmed, and caught the bus with no problems), but we’re now done with the short rows of the collar and just have ~14 more rows of ribbing to complete!

11/29/11 - Finished! Buttons sewn on, loops too. The collar didn’t end up being as “shawly” as I’d originally imagined, but I’m happy with it anyway. I can extend it if Jonathan wants, but I imagine that he’ll actually be happier with it that way.

He didn’t even bat an eye at the buying of buttons at Webs where I dragged him on Friday, so maybe he’s not as attentive as I give him credit for…or maybe he knows and has known all along…in any case, it’s done! Happy birthday, love!