Moderately Anxious

I'm sorry, but this just gets weirder and weirder. Absolutely brilliant, but weird. I'm through one saddle and the back yoke. I have marked off the stitches I expect to need for the 2nd saddle. Of course, then there will be grafting -- fine, it's all of 19 stitches, but I've never grafted anything -- and Elizabeth has already warned me it won't match up. With a guaranteed mistake already part of the progress, can you imagine what I'll make of it, even if I practice at the underarms first?

The past 24 hours have seen me poring over Knitting Without Tears (Knit across 44 rows? Why? I'm not using the same stitch count. Is 44 magic?), moving on first to an assiduous study of Knitting Workshop (Oh! It's 1/3 of the stitches. Wait, which stitches. The sleeve? The remaining stitches? The original body count?), then to the KW DVD ("Lesson 1 Seven Seamless Shoulder Shapings" "You've made it to the Master Class .... I'm not going to go too much into the details of these, because I've never had complaints about the directions so they must be right." - Wait, the what?). All of which have led me to the same sort of leap of faith I had to take with the BSJ, and of course it's all working out. So far.

It doesn't look nearly as odd as the un-assembled Baby Surprise Jacket. There are intimations of sweater-ness about it. Indications, even. This is encouraging. But then there's the part where it looks huge (pronounced with a hard "g") to me. Telling myself that the intended recipient if 5 inches taller than I am isn't as helpful as you might expect. I'm thinking this could fit Hagrid. This is less so.

All I can say is, good thing others have knit before me. Special awards to my new best friends, every Zimmermaniac who ever knit any version of the Seamless Hybrid, especially Brooklyn Tweed, for posting enough to get me my gumption back. There are the fake seams up the sides and the ribbing across the bottom (Elizabeth says the best way is Ktbl,P) to do as well. Still, March 20 is looming uncomfortably closer. I can't allow John to go to England in the Spring without this sweater, now, can I.