Final Thoughts
It seems I will never ever learn the lesson of swatching; the sweater hits mid-thigh and has a large amount of positive ease. I think the me in my head is a gangling giant compared to reality-me. I’ve asked for & gotten suggestions on making it more fitted (side steeks, a belt, darts in the back), but am going to leave it for now.

I did trim the steeks so they are all even and sewed down the button band, but otherwise am leaving the steeks unfinished (I didn’t even machine-baste them). The buttons are vintage, from my mother’s button stash, and are carved out of some stone or shell.

It’s large, warm, and soft. The colors turned out really well. I could not have done a better job if I’d planned it (except for swatching, probably). Very happy as this is also my first sweater that I also spun the yarn for and processed the brown from fleece -> FO.

8/27/10 I am using Abigail handspun as the MC and a mix of my blending experiment handspun for the yoke. Swatched and got gauge using larger needle for patterned area, smaller needle for stockinette. I am going to need to spin more Abigail to complete this; I have enough to start, finish the yoke. I’ve got ~200g ready to spin and a lot more than needs to be prepped.

9/4/10 I laid out all my yarns in color sequence from lightest to darkest before getting starting and matched them up with their area on the chart. Unfortunately, I seem to have left out one and am too close to the darkest part of the chart to make up for it. I’m going to have to frog the whole thing. Oy. On the plus side: since it’s steeked, I can add extra center stitches (after the button band), as I’ve read that this is helpful in successful steeking. I assume this wasn’t done with the originals because the angora blend would have enough grabbiness to keep the cut area together; I’m a little more paranoid since I’m not using an angora blend. Plus #2 is that I think I’m going to reverse the color changes, going from dark-> light -> dark instead of light->dark->light. Why not? I can always frog it again.

10/1/10 On hold while I spin & prep & spin more Abigail. Yoke is done; miscounted colors once again and had to use white, which I was trying to avoid. The contrast is a little starker than I wanted, so may go back and double-knit/embroider in the white parts to take it down a notch.

12/14/10 Chugging away on sleeve 2. I prepped/spun almost all of my Abigail and have 2 (or 3? I can’t remember, though I updated my stash) giant balls that should be more than enough to finish this.

12/19/10 Sleeve 2 finished: now for the body. I see lots of mindless movie knitting in my future.

1/??/11 I bravely cut the steeks and knit the button bands. Cutting wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, though it would’ve been handy to carry some contrasting yarn down between the steek stitches & body stitches. My paranoid, n00b addition of 8 steek stitches was also too much and I need to trim down & even out the edges.