The opposite of black

Yup when I'm not planning and swatching for the world's biggest blackest sweater (this is my world after all), I am knitting away on the most colorful, mindless knit. Rows and rows of stockinette are properly soothing my gauge-calculating, cable-modifying brain. The only one who is suffereing is my brother. I told myself that this was his sweater's week. I am so close to finishing...or at least getting to the point where he can try it on again before I make the final adjustments to the collar and the waist...but it's gray. And this, well, this isn't...

I've finished both sleeves, the majority of which was knit at Stitches and on the plane rides, and at the time these pictures were taken, I had literally knit as far as I could until the rest of my yarn arrives. I ended up not having enough green for the hoodie as originally planned. In fact, there was only a walnut sized ball left over when I finished the sleeves (including the green I had to steal from the back piece to finish the sleeves). I tried to get a hold of both the green and the blue on WEBS (they had the yarn on discountable close-out), but only the blue was still available. I quickly put together a group WEBS order in order to reach the discount minimum as well as ease the shipping costs. However, I got an email when they shipped saying they were sorry by my blue yarn was not out of stock. Ugh! Well at least my friends got a chance to take advantage of the discount.

So, back to the internet again. I ended up finding the green on Ebay and the blue from a little shop in Connecticut, I think. Both colors turned out to be a little difficult to come by...at least at a price I wanted to pay for them. See the issue is that I got the original yarn at 70% off. So IF I had had enough yarn to make the sweater to begin with it would have cost me less than $40, which in my sale induced haze, I thought was actually possible. Now it looks like I'll be spending almost that same amount to get the remaining odd balls I need to finish.

But this sweater is going to be wonderful. I can feel it. And as recently pointed out by Theresa (by the way, go wish her a 'congrats'...she has some great news!), it doesn't look quite to bright and child-like in person. In the right (best) light, the colors have an 'inner light' that makes them look like they are glowing, but in normal (usual) light, they are just a really pretty green and blue.

I got to the pocket last Sunday which amused me to no end. It was one of those things in knitting where you know it's going to work out, you see how it will work out, yet when it does, it still manages to blow your mind. I mean, HOW is it possible that you can make a pocket out of nowhere? The front starts...then there's a pocket...then there's the front again. Like magic!!

Seamless, seamless, magic.