Sweater progress

Okay, I admit I fell behind. I did finally get done with the bodice and am working the lace skirt. I haven't been on the internet much and have been kind of frustrated with the sweater.  I had made a couple (time consuming) mistakes while working the lace, and was too frustrated to blog about it. Now I am a bit frustrated that the lace is taking so long. I had hoped to get the sweater done by my birthday on the 9th, but that isn't going to happen. I need to knit 16 inches of lace and I can complete about an inch and a half per day. I still have to make the sleeves as well. Somehow I didn't anticipate it taking this long. Thank goodness it is looking so nice, otherwise I may have given up on it by now.

So, here are the pictures thus far.

Here is the bodice complete. looks tiny compared with my hand, but I tried it on to determine length and it stretches to fit really well (most likely thanks to that 2X1 ribbing). You can see that I started the lace skirt, just.

Just a close up of the lace work. This is half of the 12 rows that make up the lace pattern. This took me the better part of one evening to do. A full 12 rows (or one complete pattern repeat) takes me nearly all evening to knit. It isn't overly complicated, but there are a lot of yarn overs, different decreases, and there are 294 tiny stitches on the needles. It makes for some slow progress.

This is my progress as of today. That is 6 inches of lace. It looks pretty, but it's a bit depressing when I realize that it took me nearly a week to make that much lace...and I have 10 inches left!!!

A close up of the lace work. It does look pretty though :)

Another close up, with my hand for scale.

I finished watching seasons 3-6 of Desperate Housewives along with some random anime and the 3 episodes of the new Sherlock show while knitting the bodice part of the sweater. I started watching the English subbed Inu-Yasha anime while working on the lace. I don't know why, but I decided to figure out how many hours I've spent working on the lace so far. I am on episode 50, at 24 minutes each that comes out to 20 hours of anime while working on lace. Thank goodness there are 120 episodes left!