Spring Sweater!

Now that it's warm out... I've finished my sweater!  

All right, to be fair, I finished it almost a month ago but there are a few things about it I've been hemming and hawing about so I waited to post about it.  

I started with a pattern from the Fall 2008 Interweave Knits called the "Little Blue Sweater" which called for a ridiculously expensive yarn.  So, after perusing the vast selection of yarns at Webs I settled on a similar yarn:  Valley Yarns Berkshire, in a similar color to the original pattern because, hey, I love that color.  Unfortunately, the Valley Yarn had a lightly smaller gauge than the one called for, so I decided to make the sweater an increment larger than my measurements (it would only change to size of the sweater by an inch or two).  I also decided that although the original pattern made the sweater with short sleeves, the odds my ever wearing a short-sleeved sweater were pretty nil.  So I improvised some long ribbed sleeves.

The sweater has these great cable and lace rows running vertically up the front and back.  I got to do a double yarn over for the first time, which was exciting, (y'know, to me anyway,)  and I finished it pretty quickly.  I wet blocked it, sewed it together and knit the collar. 

Trying on a completed sweater for the first time is always a little frightening.  You've been knitting and knitting for so long and you never know how it's actually going to fit.  No matter how much you measure or how many times you hold it up to yourself, the finished product is always different and always unpredictable.  There's this moment as you're pulling it over your head where you're holding your breath and thinking, "this is when I find out whether I'll ever actually wear this sweater."  This is only the second sweater I've ever completed.  I knit the first one in college out of a yarn that turned out to be excruciatingly itchy.  Although the pattern was simple and the sweater looked ok, the turtle-neck was impossible to stand with the itchiness of the yarn.  So I put the sweater in my closet and promptly lost it.  I have no idea where it is today.  Needless to say, I was a little nervous when I tried on this, my second sweater attempt.

It's not perfect.  The ribbed sleeves are a little bulky and, for some reason (I'm ready to blame the wet-blocking) it's way too big in the under-arm region.  The yarn is really thick and, because it's just slightly too big for me (thanks, of course, to my making it a size bigger.  dumb dumb dumb...) it's not the most flattering of sweaters.  There's no way it's going to fit under a jacket and the large double-yarn-over lace holes make it a little breezy...  I haven't worn it yet.  Le sigh.  But I'm hoping that it'll be a good summer night-time pull over type sweater.

  

Over all, it was fun to knit and, hopefully, I'll get some good wear out of it over the next few years.  And even though it wasn't a perfect outcome... I'm already thinking about my next sweater.  I'm thinking....  gray lace cardigan?  Yum...