A real finished sweater!

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

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!

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:

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!

Twas the night before SAFF...

The sweater is done. It's very wet from its soak in the tub, with which I managed to, I think, increase the size a bit - very necessary. I won't be wearing it tomorrow, but maybe Saturday or Sunday, if I'm lucky?

SAFF is tomorrow! My first wheel spinning class is tomorrow!

Unfortunately, though, my good friend Angel might not be able to join me. She was stung by a bee a couple of days ago and had a very major, extremely scary allergic reaction. I've really been looking forward to seeing her but the doc says travel is out. Sadness! She's hoping she feels better enough to come visit. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for her!

No yarn, no sleeve, no sweater

In a fit of determination, this past Sunday I decided to bring out one of my oldest UFOs: Eris! Remember that sweater with the cabled collar that I haven't worked on since, well, forever? Maybe, I thought, if I work really hard, I can get it done for SAFF this weekend.

It had a slight problem: I needed to use two dyelots, alternating by row, to finish the sleeves.



Now, here's the tricky part. As far as I can remember, I divided the correct dyelot (of which the least was left) into two balls, and wound the incorrect dyelot into a big ball. (My previous posts on this topic didn't reveal whether or not I'd made two balls, but I'm pretty sure I did). This past Sunday, I switched from DPNs to magic loop for the sleeves and knit away, getting ready for the second sleeve last night.



I couldn't find the second small ball of yarn! I looked everywhere: in the "yarn I most likely won't use soon" tub, the "sock yarn" tub, and the "other yarns I'd like to use sometime" tub - nowhere to be seen. I even checked my random baggies of yarn ends and odd leftover balls. Nowhere. I looked again, and again. I tried to think where I would have packed it. Maybe in the sock yarn, the yarn most likely to be looked at frequently? Nope. Before the move, the little balls sat on a bookshelf in the guestroom. Maybe that was a clue to the yarn's whereabouts? But I had no idea where that might translate into in the new house.

It appears that I'm up a creek without a paddle, or rather, up a sweater without the yarn. No suddenly-revived SAFF-sweater for me. I guess this is what I get for having such a long-delayed UFO.

2 hours after first posting this:
... Nevermind! Crisis averted! I found the missing yarn! It was hiding in a drawer, presumably "where I would find it" and also to "keep away from yarn-loving kittens." I think I'll go knit now.