I thought it might be fun to share some progress pictures of the sweater I've been knitting, but first I want to give a little disclaimer:

Please don't look at this as me being productive. I'm doing this as a distraction. All I've done for the last few weeks is play WoW, knit this sweater, watch Netflix, and make meals. In that order.

But I thought, since we're all cooped up, it might be interesting for non-knitters to see how a sweater is made? There's lots of different methods. This sweater is a "bottom up" construction, so you make the body and sleeves, then put them together and do the yoke.

I think I started this sweater four weeks ago. The first piece I knit was the body:

That's the bulk of the knitting, really. It's basically a giant tube, meant to go from the waist up to just below the arms. For me, it took two weeks.

Next, I made a sleeve:

The sleeve is a whole lot less knitting than the body, but it also took me two weeks. I don't like knitting sleeves, and I find knitting in a small circumference annoying. I'm hoping to spend more like just one week on the second sleeve.

This morning, I started the second sleeve:

I'm hoping to be able to show you the yoke next week. For me, that's the most interesting part of the sweater. Especially this one, because the yoke is very colorful.

So that's where I am today:

Sleeve number two is ready to go! Now I put the three pieces together and work on them as one to make the yoke.

Friday sweater progress. The end is in sight! (Sort of. Not really.) When you put the body and sleeves together, you're suddenly working with a giant, unwieldy pile of sweater in your lap. Each round takes a long time.

But you don't mind that it takes a long time, because now there's things to keep track of, with the changing colors.

So close to the end! I can probably finish the knitting today, and then do all the post-knitting work (sewing down the neck band, seaming the underarms, weaving in a million yarn tails) tomorrow.

I figure I should take advantage of this knitting momentum, so isolation sweater number two is waiting in the wings:

Sweater number two will hopefully turn out like this:

The knitting is all done! Now there's just a giant mess to clean up with a darning needle. You can see a tail every time the color changes or I switched to a new ball of yarn.