Silk Shrug- Seams Are Coming Together

I've been working on this shrug (Silk Shrug, designed by Bobbi Intveld, for Blue Sky Alpacas), in kiwi, for what seems like way too long. This is the second of these shrugs I've made- the first was the wedding shrug, frantically whipped out in a mere 10 days. I rightly promised myself never to do anything so foolish as that again... it was painful, and that's just wrong. When knitting gets painful... well, it really is just wrong! This shrug has been much slower going, it's taken like... forever. Mostly because it has not been my top priority- I've got my needles in many a project right now, and with my 'adult ADD', especially when it comes to knitting, I put things down to pick up something else all the time. It keeps me from getting bored. It also gets me a little overwhelmed every now and then when I realize how many unfinished projects are calling out to me... so in the name of project completion I think I just may stick to this shrug until it's done! I got one sleeve and side seam done this afternoon, when I stopped to take these pictures...

Knit in Blue Sky's Alpaca Silk on size 4's, there's a lot of stitching to this piece. It's knit 'up' one sleeve, across the main body, and 'down' the other sleeve. The body, with its 40 more stitches is where it gets painfully slow- probably not to a patient knitter, but to a knitter used to baby sweaters at a larger gauge... at 8 rows to the inch, every inch of body is a lot of knitting, but once you get across to the other side, knitting down that sleeve is almost like sliding downhill.
After casting off the cuff of the second sleeve, what you have is a very long, slightly odd looking, scarf-like object, which basically gets folded in half (the long way) and seamed. I have one sleeve seamed in the photo above with the body and second sleeve laying open. The baby was added as a special bonus...
Just for fun, here's a close-up with a little sleeve seam detail. Seaming is tedious, but it's also a clear sign of approaching project completion and the euphoria that comes with it!


All that's left is the fringe... a mere 300 sts done in the round... but it's on size 9's to get an open, lacey kind of look, so it goes faster than one would think. I can almost taste the finish...
ali