About Half Way There

I've been working on Jack's Blanket now as my main project pretty much every day. The only exception is if we're at camp then I don't bring it because of the smokey smell that gets on everything. I'm almost done with the third skein out of five and I'm not getting bored with this at all. It definitely helped that we went to the Jersey shore this weekend and I worked on it in the car most of the way for the 10 hour plus round trip. Here's the current length:


I'm very pleased with this pattern and I'm glad I thought about trying the shortcut for SSKs. In Arctic Lace, Donna mentions that the Inuit people found SSKs to be too many movements for just one stitch (think K2tog as one movement). By using k2tog through the back loop it's similar enough to the SSK that it works for them. I'm no expert on stitch definition but I like how the lace sections look AND it saves me time on these very long rows:


I'm also happy with purchasing my first circular needle for this blanket. I have a set of interchangeable needles but I didn't want to worry about tightening up the joins every row. I'm thinking about using my AC Moore coupons to stock up on a set of permanent circulars for larger projects like these. Wait - who am I kidding? I'll just buy a needle here and there when I need it for a project!