When is a Skirt Not a Skirt?

I'm plugging along on the Twirly Skirt, adding a bunch of rows every day, but it takes a while at this point to notice any progress.

The first tier went pretty quickly, because it was only a couple hundred stitches around, and the rows added up quickly. 

The second tier took a little longer, but still, it was only one skein of Euroflax, albeit a skein with 270 yards in it.  I wanted to knit the entire thing into the skirt, knowing I'm a little bit taller than the imagined wearer Jill had in mind when she specified the finished length, so as I approached the end of the yarn, I did some practical knitting math. I figured out that every row in the second tier had about 12 feet worth of yarn in it by counting the three foot increments I crossed as I knit one row (marked off with blue tack tape ahead of time, of course.  Doesn't everyone use blue tack as a knitting tool?).  Then I measured out a few lengths' worth using the kitchen chairs as a swift, and began my personal striping transition  when I was in the "end zone." If ever I had happened across this kind of absurdist math in school, I probably would have enjoyed it more.  The only thing missing from my calculations was a freshly baked cupcake and a rogue highway surveyor.

Now, I am in the third tier, which feels a little bit like the knitting equivalent of the final season of Lost:  I know I'm making progress, because what's left to knit is getting smaller, but for all the hours spent with the thing, I don't feel any closer to the end. The rows have almost 600 stitches in them, and it takes me anywhere from 11 to 12 minutes to finish one whole round, which includes a lot of winching the stitches around the circs, while taking care not to wreck my addi zeros. (Flinch if you must at the thought of knitting all of this on such tiny needles, but remember that while it is taking me the zeros to render the 6.5 stitch count, it takes a normal knitter a size 4, and most of us can imagine knitting on a 4.  It may seem arduous, but the end result is the same. So imagine me knitting on 4s if the thought of zeros makes you squeamish.)

The last tier needs to be about 8 inches deep, with a row gauge of 8 rows per inch, I will have dedicated something like 12 hours of knitting to this color alone.  That doesn't seem like a lot when I think of it that way, but it certainly seems like more than that when you're in the middle of it.  But the skirt is shaping up to be a pretty thing, and the weather is perfect today for this.  So guess what I'm doing this Memorial Day weekend.

weeding.

oh well.  Maybe there will be knitting after dark.