A familiar WIP

You may have noticed that on my little project progress bars (right side of the page, about halfway down) I have a project called the Silken Scabbard Deux. You may also have noticed that the progress on this project hasn't moved since the inception of the blog.

Last year, around this very time of year, I was finishing the original Silken Scabbard. As I mentioned during Blog Week '10, this was the first knitted item I'd ever made where I felt like I knew what the hell I was doing. And the first time I really loved the finished product:

It was a Christmas present for my momma. Isn't she adorable?
I enjoyed it so much, I decided to make one for myself. I had the perfect yarn already, purchased from Touch Yarns during my vacation in New Zealand:

Imagine this x 10!
According to its Ravelry project page, I started it on Jan. 8th, 2009. I remember working furiously on it while I was in Berkeley...until it became painfully clear that there was no way I was going to finish it before it was no longer weather appropriate. I couldn't just finish a sweater and not be able to show it off immediately; unacceptable. So I just kind of put it aside. It had basically slipped my mind that it was indeed becoming sweater weather again, until about a week ago I decided to pick it back up. Excellent timing, considering everything else I was working on spawned feelings of 'hatehatehate' every time I tried to make some progress. But I had some warm, fuzzy feelings from all of your comments of encouragement and kind words on my recent destruction (thanks, guys!). I was up to a sleeveless sweater last March:


Picking it back up was like falling into my favorite recliner, or chatting with an old friend. It has dissipated my 'hatehate' feelings on knitting for now, and I've gone from zero to almost a sleeve in just week (hey, I'm slow, OK?). But now I need to try it on to determine sleeve length, and I still haven't finished off the bottom hem because it requires the dreaded....KITCHENER'S STITCH (aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!). I think this may have been part of the reason I gave up so easily last spring....I'm not opposed to a little KS, but this was like 30 inches of it. Stay tuned...