Hubby had the flu. Then I had the flu. Then Nater had the flu. (And Nater and I had flu shots! What is up with that?) It has not been fun at our house.

The good news is that there has been knitting progress! I have completed the Hurry Up Spring Armwarmers (that I plan on wearing year-round inside my always freezing classroom):

I’m very, very proud of these. They are knit in the called for yarn — Noro Kureyon, but in color 52 instead of the recommended color. (I really, really like the colorway.) I am no longer intimidated at all by DPN’s — I am all over DPNs. I kick ass at DPNs. I thought the yarn was a little weird — it wasn’t very uniform. It had lots of areas of very thin parts and lots of areas of very thick parts — but that just adds interest to the armwarmers!

I knit the first one with no problem. I got about halfway through the second one and decided it looked sloppy, then noticed some stitches that were really (for lack of a better word) wonky waaaay back at the beginning. So I ripped the whole thing out and started again. Got about a third of the way through and decided that it just looked sloppy, again, so ripped again. I ended up trashing a good chunk of the yarn after that from the beginning of the skein and the third time was the charm (which, handily enough, ended up making my striping very similar on each arm).

I am also very proud of the fact that between the first and the second armwarmer I discovered cabling without a cable needle, so the second one was done entirely without a cable needle. Much easier than fiddling with the extra needle, and very intuitive!

I really like this pattern; I thought it was well written, easy to read, and clear. And of course I love the finished product. I can’t wait to start wearing them tomorrow!

BUT WAIT. That’s not all the knitting progress I have made — there has also been progress on Nate’s sweater. I have completed the back and one sleeve! Here is the sleeve:

I don’t have a pic of the back. It’s actually a bit premature to call the back finished; I’m going to have to rip the bind-off and redo it because it is just too sloppy for me to live with. I don’t know what exactly I did wrong, but it was something — I was in a hurry when I did the binding off because we were at my in-law’s and my lovely hubby was ever-so-patiently (HA!) waiting for me to finish so we could. I should never knit under pressure!

I’m hoping to finish up the second sleeve and fix the bind-off on the back this week, so I can start Mom’s purse this weekend. The yarn has been sitting on my table waiting to be swatched for weeks now, waiting for me to finish the armwarmers. (I’m trying very very hard not to have more than two projects going at once. But I’m beginning to think that I’m going to have to raise my limit to three. It’s starting to seem like three is the absolute minimum realistic expectation, really.)

There goes the buzzer on the washing mashine. I hate laundry day.