A Bluestocking Knits

I realized around late-mid-December that I wasn't going to have this ready by Christmas after all, and so I slowed down knitting, and then I got sick after Christmas, so it wasn't going to be done by New Year's either.  I picked it up again a week or so ago, knitted steadily, and it seemed somehow as though the balls of wool were getting smaller and smaller, but the blanket wasn't getting any bigger.  How can that be?

And then I thought yesterday afternoon, "Uh-oh, it isn't my imagination.  This isn't going to make it."  It didn't.  After taking this photo, I got to the end of one ball, about thirty rows short — all of the border and a bit of the main pattern. Blast it — this was by weight!  I knitted until a little over half of the advertised 226g was left, so it should have worked, or at the very least gotten a lot closer than this.

(And, no, it isn't just the perspective, that ball in front really is considerably bigger than the other one.)