Slow progress on the Aran

My niece's aran is progressing slowly as you can see from the photo. I am making the jacket with Wendy Serenity aran and I swear that this yarn must be made out of elastic as I am still on the first 100 gram ball and quite a way up the back. It has 10% wool and 20% Alpaca but is going further than the last aran that I bought which was 100% acrylic. I had calculated roughly how much I thought that the jacket would take and it is not going to take half that amount. I hope that the LYS that my niece bought it from will do an exchange with the balls that are going to be left over otherwise I can see hats and scarves being made in grey leftover wool.

I still feel that my progress is very slow with this pattern and I may go back and do a bit more on the purple crochet jacket that I put to one side before I started this aran to have a change from the knitting tonight. I am not happy with my knitting tension as I think that it looks very uneven. I hope that it will improve when it gets rinsed and blocked. The wool is soft to work with and I feel that I am knitting too loosely even though the size of the jacket is working out perfectly. I just hope that my niece is not too disappointed when the jacket doesn't look as chunky as it does on the pattern. The smaller the needle size the better my knitting tension is. I might cast on a pair of socks to alternate thin and thicker needles sizes with the knitting to give my hands a break. If I swop about a bit instead of just ploughing doggedly on with the aran I will get more done. I have to feel inspired to knit fast.