I'm finally starting to see some progress on Dahlia - five sets out of eight (top shaping) are done, and I can see the puffed sleeves taking shape! Very exciting!

Less exciting, however, are the banes of my existence known as the Right Lifted Increase. I can do the Left ones just fine, but RLIs just seem to screw up. First I ended up bunching everything up by continuing to pick up the same stitches again and again (and in which case I'm glad the needle I was using broke, causing me to lose a bunch of stitches and ultimately causing me to frog and start again), and this time there's a bunch of very tight stitches along the increases. I'm assuming this is okay considering it's also the dividing line between the back and sleeves, but... blah. Not crazy about it either. So, now I'm doing LLI, slip marker, m1. Much nicer, and less detrimental to my sanity!

Also amusing is watching the rows get longer. I started out with 76 stitches, the called-for amount for a 1X Dahlia (I'm not a small girl. Not a HUGE one, but definitely on the largish side!), and am now somewhere in the neighbourhood of 220. Am hoping I'll have room on my circulars for the full 324 or so! (Ah, the joys of not having EXACTLY what's called for and therefore compromising - my size 8 circs are 24" instead of the much larger ones mentioned in the pattern. Oh well. I'm poor and can't currently justify another $5-$6 for a knitting needle when I have the right size, just with less length.)

Maybe, just maybe, I'll finish this in a semi-reasonable amount of time... then again, I can't guarantee that I won't take on small projects in the meantime! I already took a break Friday night and spent an hour making a case for my digital camera, as it keeps getting dings in it from rattling around in my purse. Just a basic pouch, with a drawstring added afterward when I realized it was a bit loose. Nothing too interesting, but something I'd meant to do for quite some time.

On a different note, I was tempted to do some cross-stitching today... until I looked again at the pattern I've got started. I really want the finished work, but it's much more complicated than what I'm used to. I've done some rather large pieces, but they've not been terribly shaded (my favourites are Winnie-the-Pooh scenes), and this one is. I think I need something simpler!

What are you fellow knitters up to?