Answer of the Day: No.

Unfortunately, my gut feeling was right, and the small extra bits of yarn I had left over  from another project were not enough to finish out the square. I decided to try some striping in a coordinating green color. To add some interest, I started the striping using the Fibonacci Sequence.

It looks alright, but I'm not really feeling it. I had a vision, and it didn't involve stripes. So, I'm going to rip back to where I ended the first skein. I'll start decreasing with the second skein. The center square will be smaller than I wanted, but I'll be able to make the blanket bigger by doing more border rows.

So right after I took this picture, I started frogging. I have to admit, I actually enjoy doing this. It's crazy how fast you can rip out something that took so long to knit. Usually I use my nostepinne to hand-wind the yarn as I'm ripping out. This time I tried something different with the help of  Paul and the ball-winder my mom gave me for my birthday.

Paul sat in his chair across the room from me holding the blanket and I wound this ball right off the blanket, since Paul could provide the necessary tension. It was cool to watch the rows disappearing from the blanket from across the room!

On a side note, Paul is pretty good at figuring out the mechanical aspects of my knitting and spinning tools. One of the first times I was using the ball winder, I mentioned how the Knit Picks one didn't always get the best reviews and people complained that sometimes the ball would shoot off the end before the entire skein was wound. I always thought that the faster I turned the handle the better. Apparently, that is not the case. Paul pointed out that I should try to match the speed of the handle to the rotation of the swift. I tried this, and slowed down turning the handle considerably. Perfect cakes of yarn, every time! So there's my tip for the day!

'Olive' is still taking a breather, but I did buy another longer needle, which should make knitting the yoke more enjoyable. I'll post an update to 'Olive' later this week. For the next few days though, it'll be all baby blanket!