Sleeve island

Thanks everyone who provided such positive feedback on my last post. The recommendations for cookbooks look great and I'll definitely look into them. I just know that there's a way that DH and I can compromise here - after all he's just looking out for my health. I'm starting with cutting back on the amount of actual meat that I consume and then I'll take it from there. DH pretty much went cold turkey and hasn't had any probelms adjusting, though he's not strict about it. He'll still have a bite of my food if he wants to try it.

Anyway, back to the knitting. I'm working exclusively on the Tangled Yoke Cardigan right now as I just bought a little spaghetti strap dress for my BIL's wedding over Labor Day weekend, and I think this cardigan would match nicely in case the weather decides to be cold that day. I finished the lower body up to the armholes over the weekend - and yes, it took less than two full balls (yardage still amazes me):

I will say that I didn't break the yarn after finishing the body as I didn't see a real need to do so - the instructiions for joining the sleeves to the body say to rejoin yarn back to the body exactly where you left off, so I figured I'd just use up the rest of the ball and have one less end to weave in.

Now I'm working on both sleeves at the same time. The garter rib in the round is much more bearable as I had predicted, but I was still happy to switch to stockinette above the cuffs. And I had wondered why people call it sleeve island. Now I think it's probably because people feel like they're trapped on a desert island they've been working on these sleeves for so long. Mine are coming along okay - about 2/3 of the sleeve rows are complete here. But it looks kind of short. I can never figure out how long sleeves are supposed to be in seamless sweaters, but seeing as I'm not terribly tall, I'm guessing that the sleeve length in the pattern should be just fine.

BTW, I experienced a rarity with this project. I met stitch AND row gauge. I didn't block my swatch, so we'll see if this stays true in the end. I know, I know - I'm totaly living on the wild side.