State of the Project: Ekorre sweater - the finale!

 

It's done and I am very happy with it!

I finished the first sleeve very quickly, having decided to use a paper clip to mark the decrease rows and and a cute sheep stitch marker to mark the eyelet rows:

However, the second sleeve was a different story: for whatever reason, I was very distracted when I was knitting it, so I used the wrong progress marker a few times and forgot where I was. I ended up having to rip back a few rows. Anyway, all's well that ends well! 

So, how did self-isolation go?

First of all, I am happy to say that I am feeling well and tested negative on Friday, so I will be heading back to work this week. 

Second of all, because I'm kind of a hermit anyway, self-isolation wasn't exactly tough for me: I worked out (I have a pretty decent home gym, including a barbell and weights, some dumbbells, a step bench and a spin bike), did some baking (gotta have balance between calories in and calories out, right?) and of course I did plenty of knitting. While knitting, I also got through several seasons of crime shows on Netflix:

• Trapped
• Case
• Borderliner
• Paranoid
• Lupin
• Collateral

But re: said knitting, I actually finished my cousin's In Between Dreams pullover! And sent it off to her! And she seemed to like it! She even posted it in her IG stories! I don't know what all these exclamation marks are for!

I also made decent progress on my Ekorre sweater: I have now finished the decreases and increases and moved on to the colourwork hem:

The eyelets confused me a bit at first, but are actually super simple to do.  All in all, it was pretty alright as TV knitting. However, I did have to use a progress keeper to keep track of the increase/decrease rows and a pen and paper to keep track of the rows where I had to do the eyelets. 

Aaaannnd... I also cast on the perfect companion piece to the Ekorre sweater: the Squirrel fun mittens by Lotta Lundin! These are made from fingering weight yarn on tiny needles, so I am using the chestnut brown Rauma Lamull that I didn't use for this sweater, some rust-coloured Drops Nord that I had left over from the Southampton soft and some random white yarn that I found in my stash drawer and am praying to the knitting gods will be enough. Because I am knitting with 2.0 mm needles and there are 80 stitches to a row, they are probably going to take forever to make, but they are super cute so I don't mind. 

As for the Bake Off shawl, well... I have managed to finish 1/4 of the fourth clue, but tbh I'm getting a bit bored with it, even though I have seen other people's finished shawls and they look fabulous.