UFO (unfinished object)

I started this sweater a couple of years ago.  (At least I think it was a couple... the details are hazy.)  I got it almost finished, and then I hit a snag and left it to languish in the yarn bin next to my computer desk.  (Fortunately this has a lid on it, or it would have gotten very dusty in that amount of time.)  Poor neglected sweater.

One of my friends recently commented that the finishing-up details always seem to be the parts that are the least fun.  In this case I had one sleeve that turned out bigger than the other, so I needed to re-do one of them.  And there was one other problem--I'd stopped right in the middle of that picot edging, and when I picked it back up later, I couldn't remember exactly how I'd done it.  ("Let's see... like this?  No, that doesn't look the same.  Oh bother.  I'll figure it out later."  Much later.)

The Puyallup Fair is fast approaching.  I do have one little thing that I can enter, but I started thinking about this sweater and wondering if I could finish it up in time to submit.  Grandma Mary left on Monday, and that afternoon while Andy was napping I pulled out the sweater and took a good look at it.  I spent a while contemplating the mismatched sleeves and decided that, yes, I really did need to do one over.  So I got to work.

This pattern uses a medium-gauge yarn and works up pretty quickly.  We took the kids over to the Tot Lot (which has a fence around it!) and I sat in the shade and crocheted while Doug kept Andy from plummeting off the equipment.  I got the sleeve almost done, and then decided that my tension was too tight and ripped out almost the whole thing.

The next day was Movie Day.  While I sat on the couch and crocheted, we watched Monsters, Inc, then watched it again with the commentary, then Tangled, then The Incredibles with commentary.  (I'm still ticked that our Ratatouille didn't come with commentary... apparently there's one on the Blu-Ray.)  I got the sweater almost finished, but the kids didn't get out of the house all day and were pretty cranky by dinner time.  (I did manage to take Andy out for a while--Kate was too cranky.)  Nothing like suffering for Mom's art.

I finished up the last bit of edging the next morning, got all the loose ends worked in (that's one of those "least fun" bits) and then started blocking.  I spread the sweater out on a towel laid over my big masonite board, got everything smoothed and flattened and aligned just so, and then sprayed it all with water.  Now I just have to hope that it dries in time for fair entries next weekend.    My red sweater took more than a week to dry.  (Ha!  Yes--at the end of that post I said "I have another sweater that's about 80% finished."  See, it was two years ago.)  I tried to go a little lighter on the water this time, so maybe it won't take quite as long. 

My sister Barb just had some big wins at their county fair.  Go, Barb!

Incidentally, I hear there's a Monsters, Inc. 2  in the works.  I was saying it should be about Boo after she's grown up and gone through years of therapy, but apparently it's going to be a prequel.