Spring sweater

As promised, here's my latest FO, the mohair sweater! After several amusing modifications, I can finally put it out there on the 'net! Although for some reason, I felt like making this a faceless post; not sure why. This way you can see that the neck edge is rolled (using where I picked up stitches to stop the roll), the sleeves roll, too (except there's ribbing to stop the roll), and the waist edge is crochet. A bit schizophrenic, and there are some funky pooling issues in places I'd rather them not to be, but other than that, it's not bad for a cozy, lightweight spring sweater!

First, you see, I had to redo the bind off on the collar. You should have seen me trying to pull it over my head at the knitting group meeting. You could see a little bit of blond poking out the top, but that was about it! Several women kindly suggested that I bind off more loosely (more loosely?), which worked well. Then, of course, there was the rolled hem. Now, I have several sweaters with rolled edges, all machine-made, store-bought, and their rolled edges don't seem to add bulk where it doesn't belong, so I was foolishly unworried about the plan to knit myself a rolled edge. What a mistake that was, even after blocking!! This meant that on a Tuesday evening listening to election coverage on the TV, I found myself crocheting the bottom edge of the sweater. Yes, listening to the TV because I couldn't not look at the little hook at the end of a stick.

The Stats:
Pattern: The raglan pattern in The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns
Yarn: Brooks Farm Primero, about 1.5 hanks
Time; Ravelry tells me it took about a month and a half or so
Needles: size 5 for the body

I've been doing a lot of dissertation work - most of it inside, in the study, all previous posts and photos to the contrary - and have actually been making progress. Well, at least, the progress of a quote strung together here and there with another quote plus a possibly off-topic analysis of a few photographs, all added up to make a few really long sections scattered over several MS Word documents... and it's starting to feel like a chapter draft is taking shape in my mind, even though I can easily see many more pages of typing before it gets printed out in something resembling a coherent document on a date with a red pen. (Or pencil or blue pen - it depends what's lying around). Given that May is about half over and I haven't had any drafts to show since January, like the funky pooling on the sweater, I'll take what I can get! I'd like to have an actual draft-to-show-the-advisor by early June, which is when I'll be driving all my books to my home school so they can be renewed. In person. All several shelves of them. Given that Coffeeboy and I'll be gone for a week or so in late May, this just might be a dubious goal. But one can always hope for the best, right?

Weekend bind-off

Yesterday I actually bound off the mohair sweater! I tried it on, too, and was very happy with the fit. Now all I need to do is add the neckband, sew up the armhole seams, weave in a few ends, block it, and it'll be done! Excellent!

I also acquired some new yarn to work with that I'm excited by for two different reasons.

The dishcloth yarn excites me because it's dishcloth yarn in pretty colors, and was inexpensive. The Malabrigo on the right, there, well, that's my first ever Malabrigo purchase, and I can't wait to start using it! The color is just gorgeous, "indigo." I'm hoping it'll work out gauge-wise for the Tailored Scallops sweater, but I think it might be a hair too thin. We'll see. As soon as I get that mohair sweater blocking, I'm going to turn to the Malabrigo Scallops!

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.