Up to my neck

Yeah; I finally made it up to the neck on this danged sweater!  Actually, I made it up to the neck, knitted the neck band, folded it over, picked up stitches on the inside and did a three-needle bind off.  And got it skewed to one side.  So I tinked back the bind off and did it again.  It's still skewed a little bit, but I think it'll come out in the blocking.  And frankly, I'm getting sick of ripping this thing back and reknitting it.

I also did the button bands this week.  The pattern calls for them to be only 4 rows, but they looked a little wimpy so I made them 6 rows.  I did make the 3-stitch buttonholes using EZ's one-row method.  I hadn't done those before; it's a pretty neat trick that I'll keep using.

And yes, that is a container from blank CD/DVDs that my yarn is in.  My ball winder makes cakes that just fit inside so ToolMan cut off the spindle inside and made a nice smooth opening in the center for me.  The yarn pulls nicely from the center and the ball stays neat and clean inside no matter how much I drag my knitting from home to work to knit night. 

This afternoon, I carefully pulled out the crochet chain and picked up the stitches for the left sleeve on dpns. Then I had to make notes on reversing the tapering for the sleeves. The pattern has the sleeves knit up and joined to the body before the yoke is knitted. But since my yarn is limited, I made only the top six rows of each sleeve for joining. Now, I can knit them down until they're the right length, or I run out of yarn. I have about 2/3 of a ball plus another full ball, so I think I might have just enough for full length sleeves.

Now that I'm on the sleeves, I should make pretty good progress on this thing.  Especially now that Dancing With The Stars starts tomorrow and American Idol is in full swing.  I really like Lauren Alaina, but I think a boy will win this year.  Will it be Paul McDonald with his raspy tenor and crazy dancing, or Scotty McCreery with his country twang that's way down deep, or James Durbin with his not-so-bad boy rocker persona?  Who's your favorite for this year?