finishing before finished

I hate finishing projects. The blocking, seaming, hiding ends. I especially hate that it's the last step, so that to actually finish a project, you have to do all this finishing at the end. So this time, to try to cut back on the amount of finishing there will be, I've decided to work it in during the knitting portion. Still working on the hooded kaftan from Special Knits by Debbie Bliss. Like I mentioned before, I bound off the shoulders together so I wouldn't have to sew them together later. I did the same with the top hood seam, and rather than bind off and cast on again for the bottom of the hood, I left the stitches live and increased stitches across to make up the stitch difference. One less edge to sew. When I finished the first sleeve, I picked up stitches along the body to bind off with the sleeve (using a crochet hook made it easier) so that I wouldn't have to sew that seam. And since the sleeve was mostly attached already then, I used all my long ends I had left to sew up the under arm sleeve seam, and then that whole side of the body as well. So I've got all that finished out of the way now! I'm psyched. So when I finish the next sleeve, it goes in, and I'm pretty much done, with minimal finishing. It's so much more rewarding to me this way. But I didn't block the pieces, obviously, which hopefully won't affect the finished item too much.

When I got this far, I actually almost decided to put the project away for a bit to work on something else. Despite being just 11 months old Baby wears all size 18 to 24 months in store bought clothes. She's not huge or anything, that's just the way baby clothes are sized. So for this sweater I did the biggest size - 18 to 24 months. It's HUGE. So I figured, I might as well put it aside and work on some Christmas present projects since I'm running out of time on those, and I can finish the sweater for Baby later when it'll actually fit her. I decided to finish it now. At least the knitting and seaming part, if not the embroidery. The last sleeve will just take me one week (yes, it takes me that long to knit one baby sleeve, because with Baby and Big Sister around during the day wanting to "help" I can only knit at night after they're in bed). I just couldn't leave a one armed sweater around till after Christmas. I'd see it sitting sadly in my knitting bag, and I'd feel guilty. So it's almost done, and I'll share a picture of Baby swimming in it when it finally is.