Back!

Hope you all had happy holidays! Between spotty internet connections and no spare moments, I managed to go a whole week without blogging. You missed hearing in real time about my re-knitting (three times!) of the top of the raspberry sweater, some handwarmers, and a half a sock. If it weren't for that sweater, Branden would have been right; I would have been short on knitting, left with just a sock by the end of the trip.

But, obligingly, I suppose, the sweater refused to play nice. I knit it once, and the sleeves didn't fit nicely once grafted on. I pulled it out and tried re-grafting, but it needed extra length in the front, unless I wanted puffed sleeves. Not being Anne of Green Gables, I prefer a flatter shoulder seam. That meant pulling back to the neck split so that I didn't end up with a huge neck opening. But first, I attempted to avoid the obvious by knitting moss stitch saddle shoulders. I tried taking stitches from the saddle shoulders and switching them front to back to make an interesting almost-cabled neck opening, but they were too wide to cross nicely. Then I tried just a simple boat neck opening, which worked much better.

Just a hint: moss stitch saddle shoulders are not delicate and feminine, even if they do sound like a good idea at the time. In fact, unless you're a fan of military epaulets, I wouldn't suggest going with that style.

After careful consideration and much muttering, I ripped back and reknit.

This time, I stuck with plain stockinette for the shoulders, which was the right choice. (I knew that from the beginning, but didn't really want to admit that I needed to ungraft the sleeves again and pull back that far) I wanted to echo the moss stitch cuffs at the neckline, so I made a large moss stitch turtle neck. I was sure that the neck opening was too large at first, but once I put the collar on it was just about right.

I was ready to begin the grafting when the plane touched down in Boston on Wednesday. I finished the sweater on Tuesday. So much for running out of projects to work on !

I'll post finished pics tomorrow. It's dark already (actually, I don't think it was ever light today), and it takes prettier pictures with at least a little natural light.

I wish that I had thought to take pictures of all of the intermediate sweater steps, but I was working and ripping at family gatherings, and just didn't manage to get out the camera. I also made a set of handwarmers for my ex-roommate and best friend and completely failed to take a picture of them. They were in Cascade 220, and came out very nicely for a colorwork pattern that I made up as I went along.

Besides a half an alpaca sock, that was it for holiday knitting projects. We got back in on Christmas night, and started work again yesterday. Holidays are such a whirlwind deal!

Hope you had a great holiday season, got to spend time with family and friends, and managed to complete all of your Christmas knitting on time!