The Sweater Gets Redder, and Other Developments

See?  Now it's way more of a red sweater.  I always think sweater tubes look so weird at this stage:  A testament to the many wonders of blocking, I guess.  It looks like something a boa constrictor would wear. 

My horses don't look much like the Dala horse I looked at for inspiration:
 

but they feel like her, so I guess that's enough for me.  Here is something I betcha didn't know:  It's danged hard to take pictures of your own hands while you are knitting something:

This is one of my attempts at a photo of binding off the top of a sleeve steek.  Doing it is way easier than writing down how, and photographing it is way easier than sketching it.  You may remember that my excuse for making this sweater is that I need to provide illustrations that support the techniques in my book.  The hope is that the illustrator who will actually be making the drawings has a clear idea of what I'm talking about.  So far I'm not sure which is harder; the showing or the telling.  I'm supposed to have all the pictures done on Friday, but true to knitting, this project has expanded to fit the time allotted to it.  I have no idea whether I'll make it or not.

Speaking of ongoing projects, today is the 10th birthday of one of my favorite people:
 

which means that while I wasn't looking, she managed to swallow a decade, whole.  I'm not very good at math, but Phillip explained to me last night that we have now been the parents of this particular smally for more than a quarter of our lives.  Quantifying things is hard when you are not good at math, but what this means to me is that if my life had only four phases so far, they would look like this:

1.  My own first 10 years, spent mostly running, jumping, singing, and knitting in trees.
2.  The second 10 years, spent acting on stage, railing ineffectively against various unfairnesses, and forgetting about knitting in favor of boys.
3.  The third 10 years, spent forgetting about other boys in favor of the one I married, and remembering about knitting.
4.  The last 10 years, since meeting this wee person. The time it took her to go from throwing up on me to rolling her eyes at me was a lot shorter than I expected.  She still looks cute in sweaters though, so I think we'll keep her, at least till adolescence.