Wednesday, October 31, 2007

A real finished sweater!

Guess what? I finished the sweater! Without further ado, I present:

Eris sweater.JPG

Eris!

Pattern: Eris
Yarn: Green Mountain Spinnery's Mountain Mohair, in the "spice" colorway
Needles: size 5 for the body, size 6 for the sleeves, and size 3 for the cablework
Observations: I had this sweater on the needles for 2 whole years, give or take a week or two. I knit it slowly, in pieces. My progress was stalled halfway down the body when I discovered I had one skein of the wrong dyelot. I ripped back and reknit. I probably set it aside for a while before working on the cabled edges on the shirttail hem. The sweater seemed a bit too small, so I set it aside. A while later by several months, I picked it up, hoping there'd be enough yarn for the sleeves, that alternating colorways would hide the irregularities. This proved finicky work, so I set it aside about a year ago - and didn't pick it up until last week, when I knit both sleeves that week.

Overall, I'm happy with how it came out. A wet blocking made the sweater fit better; it had been too small because I initially chose too little ease. I had to improvise underarm gussets to make the sleeves fit all right, and I ran out of yarn for the sleeves, so I did the cuffs in a corresponding color.

I learned a lot working on the cables. They really make the sweater what it is, and I really enjoyed seeing them come together. I finished them over a year ago, though - frankly I'm amazed I finished this sweater at all!

Eris - front cables.JPG
Eris-back neck.JPG

The shirttail hem is an interesting look, and I'm not sure I'd do it again for myself. However, it works well with the cabled corners:

Eris-cable detail.JPG

But most of all, this sweater has restored in me a belief in my ability to make sweaters and have them turn out all right. I'm looking forward to a few of the new items in the Winter Interweave Knits, and I am pretty sure I have yarn in the stash that would work to make them!

7 comments:

The A.D.D. Knitter said...

Wow--it looks incredible. LOVE the color and I really like the shirttail detail.

CC said...

I love the detail on the bottom too! It looks FANTASTIC on you. Great job!

Anonymous said...

Amazing sweater- well work the work and time :) I really love the sleeve details.

sgeddes said...

Beautiful! I love the sweater and the cable details are really neat. Great job.

Zarzuela said...

It looks great! I'm glad you managed to finish it after all. It must have been so frustrating with all the roadblocks. Your adventures at SAFF sound like fun too. See you soon! :)

Jessica

Sheepish Annie said...

Woo-hoo!!! That is a fabulous sweater! You've given me hope for resumed sweater knitting. I tend to give up easily when the sweater knitting doesn't go well. Your decision to stick it out for two whole years is very, very inspirational! Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Congratulations!! Even if it didn't look good, which it does, at least it's DONE! A weight off (and on) your shoulders