Thanks to a fairly interesting program on the decline of Rome on History International last night, I got a bunch more done on the second Cobblestone sleeve.

I'm at the point where I can once again visualize this being a finished sweater, which means I once again have enthusiasm for working on it.

I have a particular progression for projects...at the beginning, I am all excited about it. It will be the Best Sweatah Evah! It will be so flattering, and go with so many of my other clothes...and I get all excited about it.

Then it hits the midpoint. It will never be finished! It's so dull! It's not going to be as pretty as I thought! This is often the point where I put the project aside and start something else.

But because I am persistent - and because I cannot stand either to rip things out, or to have them sit unfinished forever, I keep working on it.

And eventually it reaches some tipping point where I complete enough of it that I can once again visualize it as a finished project, and my hopes about it rise again, and I think about how nice it will be to have it finished.

And I start thinking about the next project I will start. I'm thinking the next sweater will have to be one where I don't have to alternate balls of yarn to avoid pooling - that's one of the things that's really gotten me down about this project. I have yarn put aside for the Cambridge Jacket (a zip-front jacket sweater: Ravelry link, for people on Ravelry. I also have yarn for the Skye Tweed Vest (again, a Ravelry link for which you must be a member). I like that one - I may have to hunt around for the issue that it's in. I also was looking at the Basketweave Pullover.

Oddly, all three of these are sweaters designed for men. I have sort of a loden-green yarn for the Cambridge jacket, a light baby-leaf green for the vest, and a lovely, bright, turquoise (it's called "Lake Blue") for the Basketweave sweater, so at least I will be doing a couple of those in somewhat feminine colors.

It's funny though - a lot of the Interweave Knits sweaters that grab my attention are the ones designed for men. I don't know if that's just I like the more rugged style, or if they tend to be simpler designs (I generally prefer the more simple designs to the more rococo stuff with colorwork and all that). Or if it's that it appeals to my vanity to be able to make a sweater in the smallest published size rather than one of the larger ones, as I generally have to with women's sweaters.

Or maybe it's that I never really had a "boyfriend" sweater, in the true sense of "you nicked it from your boyfriend and are wearing it now." (I never really had a boyfriend I felt free enough with to steal one of his sweaters...) I do have a sweater my dad stopped wearing and was going to send to Goodwill until I took it, but that's not the same thing by a long shot.

I probably need to go look at my Ravelry queue. I have a lot of sweaters on there and I might find one that would be the perfect "next" sweater. (Though right now I am leaning towards the Basketweave pullover, mainly because of the blue yarn.)