Late Again

So, I'm late in my self-imposed Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule once again. Not a great track record given that it's only the first week of this. Ah, well...things happen. It's still three times this week. But, yesterday was fairly busy. It included practicing, cooking, teaching, driving, knitting, and hanging out with some friends. We went to their house last night and played games and generally had a good time.

I also finished one of the sweaters that has been languishing for a while. I need to wash/block it before I get proper photos taken of it. I took a few pictures of myself with it on, but that is not the easiest thing to do. Here are a couple of the better ones. I have couple ends that need to be woven in, but otherwise it's finished.



The pattern is Sophia from French Girl Knits and was knit in Knit Picks Swish DK in white. I started this little sweater a few months ago, and got pretty much done with it before I stalled out. It's been a fairly frustrating sweater from the beginning. It starts with the sleeves, and I decided that I would just go ahead and start it with the recommended needle size, and if I didn't get the gauge called for it wouldn't be that big of a deal to rip it out and start over. Now, it's common for me to have to go up a needle size from that recommended in a pattern, but I had to go up three sizes for this one. That means I knit one of the sleeves four times before it finally worked. There are only so many times a person can knit the same sleeve before beginning to lose a grip on her sanity. Anyway, from there it wasn't too bad. I knit the two halves, grafted them together, and realized that I didn't have another size 8 circular needle long enough to knit the collar. The collar had to be knit separately and then attached to the rest of the sweater. It was at that point that it got put down and didn't get picked up again until this week. I borrowed the necessary needle from my mom and finally got back to it. Knitting the collar was fine. No problems there. Attaching it was an exercise in frustration. I didn't read all of the directions and things weren't matching up, so I had to undo a lot of what I'd done. Then I read all the directions, but misunderstood a crucial part, and so had to undo a bunch of it again. Then, it was still all screwed up, so I completely detached the collar, counted all the stitches, and realized my stitch count was a little bit off on the body. Not enough to make a difference in fit, but enough to make attaching the collar not work out quite right, combined with my inability to follow the instructions. Anyway, I finally got it all put together, and now it's done. I gave my mom her needles back today.