While watching the Olympics I’m engaging in some knitting of Olympic proportions. Uh, not! I’m working on little tiny things – namely the Baby Dale. I’m actually approaching the finish line! We’ll see if I can break the spell of being prone to cast on for Dales, but not actually finish them. Here is the sweater with the steeks sewn and ready to be cut:

This pattern, unlike most Dales (I think – I’ve not done a lot) has you cast off at the underarm and then cast on steek stitches. I’m not sure I see the advantage. I think next time I would just continue on and stitch and cut the sleeve opening without a steek. And here it is cut and ready for seaming, sleeves, front border and neckline:

Thanks to Chery for her neckline suggestions. Instead of going into back-and-forth mode once you get to the neckline decreases, Chery suggests continuing to knit in the round, but purl the neckline decreases and continue on your merry way. When you’re done, you stitch along the purl bumps and just cut out your neckline. It’s true that you end up cutting away some knitting, but we’re not talking a size 56 here! There’s minimal waste and considering the hassle factor, I’d do it on a size 56 too.

Apparently a lot of knitters are really afraid of cutting their knitting. That’s never bothered me. After all, it’s only knitting. No one will die, or even be seriously injured. Unless you run with your scissors, of course. I started on the front border last night and am about 2/3 done – it’s going very fast. I need to force myself to finish a paper for school and my reward will be to pick this up and plunk myself down in front of the TV with the Olympics. Thank goodness for Tivo – I keep having to backtrack on TV to see what I missed while I was looking down at my knitting. It’s almost as bad as watching movies with subtitles.