Manufactured Urgency

On Monday I leave for a business trip to Florida.
(Whoop-di-do. This will be my fourth trip to the Orlando Convention Center since I joined my magazine in 2006. At least I know my way around. And, hey, we're staying at the Ritz(!) this year, so that should be nice.)
Nell is so very close to being done, it occurred to be that if I focus a bit I might finish it in time to take on my trip.
I seem to remember setting trip to Florida as a deadline for Nell in the past, and, well, we know how well that worked out.

No, really, it's realistic.
All I have to do is finish knitting and attach the collar, seam one arm, and weave in the ends.
And I have six days to do it.
Shoot, I can knit a sock in that time and this is less work than a sock. Right?
Although some of it might be more tedious.
I wish this had occurred to me sooner. I might have spent more time on Nell and less time on my Cotton Ribbed Socks and making cute flower rings.
However, I worked on the sweater last night and the collar is almost done.
Ha!

Does that count as short rows?
When I worked the first half of the collar, I was puzzled by the directions because they have you work even until it reached the center back of the neck, then bind off in steps over five rows. For the second side you reverse the shaping so the steps are on the other end and the two pieces can lock together like a jigsaw puzzle.
At the time, this did not make sense to me, as it seemed to give you a bunch of extra fabric. I thought, "Why not just reach the center and seam the damn thing?"
Now that the second half is almost done, and I can see it in action, I realize this must be some strange version of short rows, but worked in two separate pieces. I think the extra fabric tab thingys are going to provide slack so the collar can fold over and lay properly.
I was folding it back as-is last night, and the top edge was definitely flaring away from the other half of the collar. Obviously it would never work in it's current incarnation.
Well, I shall be tackling that situation tonight.
I really think it's going to happen this time.

Damn Doily Update
My mother-in-law reports that her friend loves, loves, loves the doilies. She apparently was showing them off to anyone who would stand still long enough.
MIL says everyone admired how beautiful they are and were impressed by the fine gauge and you just don't see work like that anymore.
It would seem that if anyone noticed one is slightly off from the other two they were too polite to mention it.
I think I also heard my MIL say something about getting me to make HER some, but I'm just going to block that out. :-)