One of these things is not like the other

Let's play a little game, shall we?

One half of this sleeve was knit at my local stitch and bitch. One half was knitted at home, parked on the couch watching TV.



Any guesses which is which?

This sleeve, by the way, was taken from my hands to show a new knitter an example of stockinette stitch. The one doing the demonstrated said, "See how this is smoother?" and then charitably added, "Of course, this hasn't been blocked yet." Obviously not. I don't know how much blocking can remedy that sort of knitting. And it was a dry meetup, too.

The cardigan that once had it in for me has decided to trade its orneryness in for the most powerful demotivator: monotony. After the lace pattern on the body combined with the shaping, the sleeve is really pretty boring. I now have this much sweater done:



...and it looks like I'm on track to finish well within my deadline of the end of the month.

More challenging is going to be the Huepow's Garden shawl. Last time you saw it, it looked like this:



And now it looks like this:



This is the hardest thing about knitting triangle shawls from the center neck out. You start with rows that are four stitches wide and sail gaily along as the rows get wider and wider. Then you get to a point where you are pretty comfortable with the row length, which for me is at about half the finished width, and realize it's just going to keep growing. But by the magic of geometry, when you reach half the finished width... you're only a quarter of the way done knitting. You're feeling maxed out on the rows, and you have to do what you did three more times.

And then, of course, you have the pleasure of casting off something like two thousand stitches, being very, very careful to do it loosely enough that it will stretch during blocking, because heaven help you if you have to unpick those two thousand cast off stitches to redo them. It's enough to drive a woman to the bottle, but apparently that also has a detrimental effect on the average knitter's ability to execute a simple bindoff with accuracy (although the tension might no longer be an issue).

Right now, I am about two third of the way done with this shawl, and I can only knit a row or two at a time without feeling ready to burst into tears, eat a lot of chocolate, or throw the shawl into the street to be dragged away for nesting material by squirrels and raccoons. So far, only the promise I made to show it off at my LYS has stopped me. But will this one be done by the end of March? ...I might have to cheat and bind off early, if I care about my sanity or the health of my liver.