WOOHOO!

I HAVE FINISHED MY SWATCH!!!!

Here's a picture of the whole, huge, long, ugly thing:

The middle looks icky because I was doing so many increases and decreases in so short a space.

Here are a couple of pictures of the stripes:













...and one picture of the stripes from the purl side (I think that this one looks kinda cool)...

And here's a picture of the ribbing.

So. Where and how did I actually find the time to finish this, you ask?

Statistics class.

The professor lectures right off of the slides that he has printed out and handed to us. I barely have to take any notes, and if I didn't have something to keep my mind a little busy I'd go crazy from boredom. So I knit. And I am going to be fantastically productive in class for the next 8 weeks. *g*

I went to my LYS and bought myself a pair of size 10 Crystal Palace bamboo straights to replace the crappy plastic size 8s I've been working with so far, and I've been working up a swatch for my next (or should I say very first? *squee*) project. It'll be pretty simple; I'm just going to do a striped scarf in this stitch. I cast on 24 sts for the swatch and will probably do 5 reps of the pattern. I'm on row six right now (one rep and a half) and was amazed the first time I really looked at the work and saw the pattern! It was way cool. I think I made a couple of goofs, but they don't really show because it's a dark yarn (the red in the swatch pictures above). Hopefully the swatch will be completed by the end of the week (I have an hour each morning, yes, but I'm kind of slow and I do have to pause to take notes or actually pay full attention on occasion).

Wheeeeee! This is so exciting!