Deadlines....

So, I am leaving for my Homecoming weekend, the one I was hoping to wear "Marlo" to. I thought that if I gave myself a deadline, I would knit faster, and get it completed. I kind of feel like my eyes were too big for my timeline. Here is my progress in the last week...(the pic is a little funny looking because I took it on my cell phone, my digital camera battery decided to die!)I have finished up to the start of the third cable repeat. I had to rip out 8 rows when somehow, I managed to either drop a stitch or YO when I was knitting plain stockinette. I tried everything to figure out how to fix it, thinking that if it didn't look super great, that's OK since this is the back. I was having no luck and didn't want to unknit two rows of cable, so, after walking away from it for a few minutes to gather my courage, I ripped. And then painstakingly picked up my live stitches, trying so hard not to drop any more stitches. It was successful (thank goodness!!) and I managed to knit back to where the problem occurred. I couldn't look at this project anymore for the rest of the night, so I didn't get much accomplished. My deadline was to finish and block tonight so that I could pack the sweater, but no such luck. So, though I will not be wearing it...I will be at least bringing it with me to work on. Maybe next week I will finish!

Since I have come to grips with the fact that my sweater will not be finished, I decided to do another little project tonight while I was doing laundry. I will be meeting up with a friend I haven't seen in a couple of years, and she is pregnant! So, I thought it would be a nice gesture to bring her a handknit gift.

These are the "One Hour Baby Booties" from the Stitch n Bitch Nation book. The designer and pattern are true to its name, and only took me about 1.5 hours to start and complete...blocking and all. I actually made one this morning per the instructions, and it turned out really small. Since I don't have kids, I don't really have the concept of really how big or small a baby's feet are, so I decided to make them bigger. My friend is due in October, so I figured that the baby could get a lot of winter use out of these if they were a little bigger. I think they are super cute. I did modify the pattern per some advice on the SnB forum, and knit a couple extra rows instead of making a strap and making them in to Mary Jane type booties.

A great, exciting piece of news in my knitting world as well...I have learned to knit 2 socks at the same time on 2 circular needles! It is super easy, and I really can't see myself knitting socks any other way in the future. I have one sock stalled on the dpn's right now, and plan on taking it with me to hopefully finish while I am sitting in lectures this weekend. I have located the LYS and will definitely be paying them a visit while I am in town. I didn't knit while I was in grad school, which is probably a really good thing, so I didn't have any clue about LYS's and the like. Come to find out, I lived just down the road from them the whole time!!! Yet another good thing about not knitting in grad school...my semester stipend would have been blown in the first week!!

Well, I better get packing and also getting myself ready for work tomorrow. I am leaving straight from work, so that means that I have to have everything ready by 8am tomorrow morning!! Blech!! Hopefully I will have some FO's to show off when I get home!