It seems that all I needed was a leetle bit of encouragement to get this baby done. A carrot on the end of a stick as it were. Just posting my dilemma encouraged me to sit down and whack out the last little bit of garter stitch that was left on the body. One viewing of Batman and some down time with the girls, and there she was...

Boo's Haiku in all it's boxy glory.
Yarn: Lion Brand FIsherman's Wool that I dyed, oh...four years ago? using Wiltons cake dyes. One of my first ever dyeing experiments. I went overboard on the colors a bit - five was too many - and it's been sitting in my stash ever since. I used about 1.5 skeins.
Needles: US 8/5.0 mm straights
Start/finish: 7/7-8/9/09
Gauge: 4.5 stitches/9 rows per inch in garter stitch
Comments/mods: I whizzed through the start of this baby in no time flat, and stalled out with 3 inches of garter stitch left on the body. I guess my need for mindless knitting passed fairly quickly! But I was dying to start the next socks, so I got back on the horse and finished up in just a couple of days. Once the knitting was done, I paused briefly to wind the yarn for the next sock project, and then sewed up the seams and set in the sleeves. I have not yet put any buttons on, but that should be easy to accomplish before it gets cold.

I actually like how the pooling turned out on this, splitting into yellow/brown and pink/orange sections with the green bleeding over into each. Unfortunately, novice dyer that I was, I didn't quite rinse the yarn enough, and after each session with this stuff my fingers were a lovely fuschia color. That might also have contributed to the lack of progress for a while.

I was curious to see if I could get the sleeves to match, so I started at the beginning of an orange section for the cast-on edge on both and managed to get them pretty close. The next big debate was whether to have the pink/orange side or the yellow/brown side face forward. I like pink and orange better, so that's what faces to the front. The nice thing about this pattern is that the pieces are reversible, so if you don't like the color combo on the "RS" of the sleeve, you can flip it inside out, designate that the right side, and carry on your merry way.

I showed this to Boo when it was done and her response was...minimal, to say the least. She looked at it, looked at me, and wandered off to look for her animules. Hopefully she'll actually wear it this fall, and there's enough yarn left for a hat and mittens if she's really lucky.

Right. Lucky. Lucky in that she's short and her mother dresses her funny.

Porpoise Fur