So...it's only the third day of the new year, and I'm thinking I might be in a bit of a pickle. To say the least.

I've got the first socks underway - two thirds of the way down the leg of sock #1. The plan is one repeat (12 rows) or the equivalent (i.e. heel flap/turn) every night. That should get me done by the end of the month, easy, not including knitting on my commute. Sweater #1 (Himself's Christmas present) has sleeves and a back. Front is started, and again - one repeat a night (also 12 rows. Synergy I haz it) should get it done in a couple of weeks. It's a bit of a cheat since it was 75% done before 2011, but it's got cabling on every right side row and 130 stitches. It totally counts.

So everything is going swimmingly until I take stock of the first Really. Huge. Project. That would be number 6 on the Eleven in Twenty Eleven list: the River Run pullover. This is a gorgeous men's sweater - stranded colorwork in nine different natural shades of Shetland wool. Un-freaking-believable. The largest size requires approximately 3400 yds of heavy fingering weight yarn. The grist is 1727 ypp, meaning I'd need 1.97 lbs of yarn. I've been wanting to make this for a long time, but I don't have 2 lbs of Shetland wool in nine shades lying around. What I do have is 2 lbs of white Falkland wool sitting in my lair, and a metric fuckton of dye. So here's my evening schedule for the rest of this month:

Knit one repeat/equivalent on socks
Knit one repeat on sweater
Spin white Falkland until my fingers fall off the bone or I end up face down in a pile of roving, drooling and snoring softly.

At the end of the month, I'll start plying my little brains out, and hope for the best with the dye pots. The original is done in black, white, three shades of grey and four shades of brown. Black, white and grey are all good - I might shift the browns to blues just for mine/the recipient's aesthetic pleasure.

The real pisser of it all is that I've got a deadline for this project: it needs to be done by early March. Seeing as it took me six months to spin my last specific sweater project, I'm not feeling too optimistic. On the other hand, there will only be one plying stage (2-ply vs. 4-ply cabled yarn). I will spin woolen, with a high ratio, in order to bang out as much yardage as possible. The last time I spun Falkland, I did a pound in approximately 6 days (plying and all). It was a bit thicker, more DK weight then sport/fingering, and I certainly wasn't doing anything else, so I think I could get the yarn spun by the end of January. Right?

Right?

*crickets*

Hmmmm...I'd better get sampling then.

Porpoise Fur