I’ve been knitting away on my Middlebury sweater, which you may recall temporarily stumped me a while back with its tendency to scrunch up on the needles. I needed to figure out whether it would hold a lengthwise blocking or whether I had to make it longer to compensate for its desire to be scrunched up, which would have meant ripping out the piece I was knitting and starting over with fewer stitches. Well, I finished and blocked one side of the front, and it looks like it will hold the length just fine when it’s draped on my body. Here’s a picture that shows what it looks like when you hold it up in the air:

Middlebury stretched

Still life with ficus

It would have been a better picture if I had turned the knitting around, as what you’re actually looking at here is the back. Whoops.

And here’s my progress so far — one side of the front (again shown backwards) and about two-thirds of the length to the armholes on the back.

Middlebury pieces

Progress on the Middlebury sweater to date

I’m still enjoying the project, though it occasionally occurs to me that I have a long way to go, and I’m not sure how long my love will hold out. Let’s just hope nothing better comes along.

Meanwhile, the other day, I was skimming back through the Yarn Harlot‘s Knitting Rules and I came across a statement about how she always keeps her swatches and maybe some day she’ll sew them up into a blanket. (I’m paraphrasing; I don’t remember what she actually wrote.) It crossed my mind that maybe my swatches could be a blanket, so I laid them all out on the bed.

It was a lot of fun to look at all of my swatches again, but . . .

swatch blanket

. . . I think they’d make one ugly blanket.