Mavis Reaches the Sleeves

I haven't posted the last few days because I was only progressing with Mavis and I thought you had probably seen enough photographs of minute changes, minute advances and retreats, over that particular garment. I managed to separate the back and front satisfactorily this time, and finished it off up to the shoulders. I'm very pleased that I've got a charcoal stripe one one shoulder, and a purple stripe on the other. I don't believe in making random yarns look symmetrical. The friend for whom I'm knitting this jumper did enquire whether the stripes on the sleeves could be matched, and I told her that they could, but they won't. Cranky, moi?

I didn't get much done at the weekend because I went to stay with my niece and her family. For Sunday breakfast she made me a smoked salmon bagel with scrambled eggs on the side; I am thinking of changing my will in her favour.
Today I got started on the first sleeve. I had considered doing the sleeves on four needles, but I decided it was probably more trouble than seaming them. The holey bit of the chevrons would probably get even more holey if I were juggling needles, or using circs. I've tried two circs and the magic loop and I always end up feeling as if I'm spending more time yanking the stitches round cables than I am actually knitting. And before you tell me that that's a circ in the photo, it is but I am knitting backwards and forwards.

I'm thinking this might best be blocked before I sew it together. It might be easier to get the chevrons on the body properly stretched if I'm not wrestling with sleeves at the same time, and the sleeves might be easier to block when they're flat.

We had a surprisingly lovely sunny morning today, which made it all too easy to believe that we may be going to have an early spring, although the general Scottish tendency about weather like this, whenever it occurs, is to look bleakly at the sky, shake our heads, and say, 'Aye, we'll pay for this.' Whatever may be to come, it certainly brightened up the knitting of this yarn and I still love the colours.

On Friday evening all this thinking and counting overwhelmed me and I did a little bit of fast gratification with the beginning of a Log Cabin washcloth. It's fun. I'll finish it off when I've done the first sleeve. Unless I crack and do it before that.

I'm beginning to look out for the vintage Boyes I bought last week. I think I can reasonably expect them to arrive this week and I might get slightly impatient about them soon. Once they arrive, I can cast on for Scaruffle, or for the Kusha Kusha Scarf.