Knitting progress

The weeks and days are flying away from me again. Every year it seems to be more and more true what they say about time passing more quickly as you get older. I can't believe it's St Patricks day on Monday week. A friend is getting married on the Saturday of the bank holiday weekend and it doesn't seem possible that it has arrived so quickly.

I have made some progress on my jumper though, which is good. I'm hoping to spend most of this weekend working on it and would love to have it nearly finished for our class next Tuesday, which is the final one. I have really enjoyed the class and learned a lot but mostly gained a lot of confidence. Here's where I am so far:

This is the first sleeve and first inch or so of the back and front (for a bit of perspective I put a little tea light candle in a glass holder beside it). I made the sleeve about two inches longer than in the pattern and have also made the back and front eight stiches longer each. This was the great thing about the class I've done - learning that I don't need to slavishly follow the pattern measurements and giving me the confidence to decide, no that won't fit me, I'll knit a bit more.

I have to knit 8 inches more to get to where it starts to separate for the neck, then knit around the neck opening and then pick up those stitches again to knit the other side as far as the sleeve and then decreasing to knit that.