It just feels like acres of stocking stitch...

...but possibly only because this might be the furthest that I have ever got, knitting something for myself!

I am determined to continue but please note that my friend had baby boy last Saturday (no knitted gift is ready) and another friend is about to pop out a baby girl in another 2 weeks or so (no knitted gift is ready).

Hmm, how long can I doggedly keep ignoring the outside world and knit...for...myself?!

The first of two worries is that I stop, get distracted and this is as far as my very own jumper ever gets.

The second worry is that I started knitting the back of this jumper in January when I first got the book and was a chest size 46" (or so). I cast on the second largest size.

I have been dieting - I am on a very strict food waggon - chest size: 42". - I plan to continue dieting my way towards my recommended BMI. As we all know, in the manner of things diet related - my chest is likely to vanish (nay, implode) while my lower half refuses to thin out.

My worry is, is that I finish jumper, it swamps me (at least up top, while wedging itself onto my hips) and I find that I cannot get away with it as an outsized tunic (I live in eternal hope that I might shrink this much).

Now, that might not be a disaster. Although I might not end up with my very own, very first jumper (sob) - I do have a friend lined up as a possible recipient. However, while she loves the colour of the yarn, she is dubious about the pattern.

Frankly, it would break my heart to give my first full sized item to someone who takes it just because it is on offer, or because she doesn't want to be rude and sticks it in a drawer, never to be enjoyed.

If scenario two emerges, never mind the Knitting Nature Knitalong - I will be scouring the internet for a Knitting Nature Swapalong, to find another like minded knitter who optimistically cast on a phyllo-yoked pullover in the same or similiar Calmer colourway but has expanded outwards at approximately the same rate that I have shrunk!

Suffice it to say that this would take the existence of two knitters, who fell apon the same book with glee but were far too stubborn to look at the physical body clues and rip out before we got beyond the Point of No Return - partly out of astonishment that we have got as far as we have, partly as there is no bloomin' way that we are unpicking all-of-that-hard-work.

I will have you know that my index finger aches from all that yarn-throwing around my needle.