Are you sick of my obsessive knitting stories? So sorry...

...but they continue, so you'll have to remain in suffering. At least until Sunday.

I FINISHED THE MITTENS.

And was rewarded with my medal:

I'm all super thrilled. This is one Christmas gift down. We won't talk about the rest of the Christmas list, lest I get overwhelmed before it's even September 1st. But these are for my dad, and I'm happy that he'll have them prior to his winter fishing season, which begins in November.

The sweater lives on, so never fear. I'm now on round 16 of the yoke color chart (of 25 total rounds). Then just an 8 round color decrease chart, and voila! Bind off. I'm almost there. Trouble is, knitting with multiple colors (I believe what I'm doing is called Intarsia; there is also Fair Isle knitting, but that's something different, involving so many colors at one time it makes me break out in hives just to think of it) means that I'm working much slower than usual. I have 4 skeins of yarn currently attached to my sweater. To prevent them from all tangling together and/or not ready at my current round for when I need them, I have to "carry" the colors I'm not currently using as I knit. Any one round only uses 2 colors at most, so I'll carry both along as I knit, tucking the unused color behind the other stitches as I go. The colors that I'm not using at all that round I just carry up at the beginning of the round/join. It's all very precarious and nerve wracking for a person naturally afflicted with some level of anxiety. But it's looking quite lovely.

I just hope I finish it on time.