Starting stuff, finishing stuff, avoiding cleaning

So I put in a gigantic order from Webs during their big sale in which Cascade 220 was only 4.89/skein and it came in on Wednesday.  Whee!  I had to prewarn the BF that a giant 9 lb box of yarn would be delivered but that it was NOT all for me.  He never gives me a hard time, but I always feel a little bad spending bunches of money on yarn since I give him the how-much-money-do-you-think-we-have-for-that-kind-of-stuff stink eye whenever he mentions musical gear that he wants.   The order really wasn't all for me - two other friends went in with me so that our shipping would be cheaper, but I got the fun of getting a giant box of yarn come to the house!  I ordered some natural color for a sweater that my mom asked me to make for her so I finally started it last night.  I haven't taken a picture yet because it's just 2.5 rows in and you can pretty much picture 2 and a half rows of garter stitch in natural colored wool, can't you?  I'm going to make Norah Gaughan's Tweedy Aran cardigan.  My mom is just a tiny thing - I think her bust measurement was only 33" or something, but she's got this thing about not wearing fitted sweaters.  She tells me that tight arms "make her hot" and she does this frantic yanking at her upper arm thing to show me how crazy it makes her.  I know that a more fitted sweater would look nicer on her, but I'm not about to tell her that, and I figure at some point in your life you care much more about comfort than fashion.  Because she's my mama I'll make her what she likes.  This sweater does have some waist shaping which hopefully she won't complain about - I think she really just wants a waist-length boxy thing.  She gave me a sweater that she does like the fit of and it's like 42" around.  I noticed that Interweave has started giving info about the modeled sweaters - like "the model is wear the size 43.5" version" and sometimes they'll even tell you how much ease that is.  I love that!  And, lo and behold, the model, who I imagine is probably about my mom's size (except that she's only 5'2" or so) is wearing the 43.5" version and it looks not at all sloppy on her.  I think this will look just lovely on my mom!  I'm going to try to make the arms the next size up and hope that they won't look puckery when I sew them in.  I saw on Neither Hip nor Funky's blog her version of this sweater where she made little triangular gussets to go on the under arm to make them a little bigger and she said they fit in just fine.  

My most recent FO is a cowl (my new obsession) that I started so that I could have something easy to knit on during my trip to Memphis for a meeting this past week.  It's basically just a giant version of the Jaywalker chevron pattern and I used some stashed Crystal Palace Deco ribbon yarn in a sort of olive-y color way.  Unfortunately I had it finished by the time I got to the hotel - unfortunate in that I then had nothing to knit on the flight home, or at the knit night that I thought about going to down there with the Memphis Knit Mafia (although they meet at a coffee shop and all look very sweet, so it's probably not too too mafia-like - the name still pleased me though!)  I did, however, get to wear it the next day and even my boss (who's every word annoys me) commented that hey, I got it done, because he saw me working on it in the airport.  I really should have taken a picture when I got home that night, but it was late and I was tired and now I have no FO photo because I just haven't had a good photo op since.  I'd do it now except that I'm just schlupping around in a tee shirt and loungey pants because I'm supposed to be cleaning this morning and there's no way I'm showering till I get that done.  I just kind of raked my hair down with my fingers and it's definitely not something to immortalize in a photo!  And yes, I know that blogging is not even close to cleaning, but I'm really good at dragging this crap out all day, alright!?