4/12/10 - I’m finished! Wore it to church yesterday and even got some compliments!

4/6/10 - Bound off the button band last night and blocked all the pieces. The sleeves were a pain, but they’re in the shape I want them. Checked on them this morning, and it’s mostly dry. I can’t wait to seam it tonight! Not that I love seaming, but it’s my first completed sweater. It looks beautiful blocked. Just like my sketch. :)

4/5/10 - Sleeves finished, and the button band is a very long row and a half away from bind off. I’m hoping to bind off later today and block tonight! Maybe seaming tomorrow????

The sleeves are scaring me. I finished the cap and sorta matched them up with the armcye, and the sleeve cap seemed really small. I re-did all my math a couple times, in a couple different ways on both the cap and armcye, and it all was knitted up correctly according to my calculations. Must have been my guage. I think the armcyes are fine, I’ll just have to block the sleeves to within an inch of their lives.

My guage is so wierd. I have a different guage for the same needles and yarn depending on how I’m knitting. If it’s a small swatch, I knit a bit tighter, if it’s in the round, I knit quite a bit tighter. So when I swatch, I have to think about how it will knit up. I’m swatching a summer top that’ll be in the round, and I had to do a swatch in the round to get an accurate guage.

3/30/10 - Finished the 10th decrease last night. Strange, one ball of yarn is running out slightly before another. If I have time to go to knit night tonight, I may just get those sleeve caps done. Yay!

3/28/10 - Finished the 9th of 10 increases before working the sleeve cap. Hoping to start those caps tomorrow.

3/22/10 - Have about half the sleeves done. I’m working them two at a time. First time I’ve ever done that. I’m really glad too, since my guage on the sleeves is a wee bit off from the body. Not a big deal, but would look strange if the sleeve were off from each other. My husband and I had our beginner beekeeper course on Saturday, so I had litterally 8 hours to plow through those sleeves while listening to lectures on how to identify foulbrood in your hives. Facinating. :)

3/17/10 - Finished the body last night! Used a kitchner stich to attach the front and back pieces. I even was able to try it on. Now for the sleeves.

3/1/10 - Life took over, no ravelympics for me… took the tags down. Between the fact that I apparently was on crack when deciding where to divide the front sections from the back, as well as a few fudges and one extra increase, I’ve torn out the front right like three times. I navigated through all that though and now am ready to make progress again. One of the front sections is mostly finished.

One mistake turned into a design feature. I apparently lost 4 stitches in the last section of openwork. which as you can see from the schematic is located directly below the bust. I had been waffling back and forth between doing any bust decreases at all. A standard proportion of a womans body is that the bust is 2 inches less than the hips. I’m slightly more well endowed than this proportion. So I couldn’t decide if I should decrease by 8 stitches to maintain 2” of ease in the standard sized bust and the hips, or to give the bust a little extra breathing room. I had decided to do no decreases, then discovered the missing 4 stitches, which disappeard right where I had originally planned on having the 8 stitch decrease. Perfect! We’ll split the difference. The bust gets a tad more room without losing any of the elegant tailored and fitted look. Now I just need to figure out where those decreases go if I’m doing it on purpose.

2/8/10 - Finished the first section of open-work. Now doing raised ribbing for a million years. Work currently measures almost 10’’. Yay!

1/27/10 - Ravelympics 2010 Challenge - This is listed in the Open Dance event with the Team Yarn Harlot Fans. Challenge: to finish the test knit and get the pattern completely done and ready for test knitting and/or tech editing.

1/26 - My first full sweater, and the first pattern I’m actually working hard at getting available for sale. Designed because I sit in a very cold office, and wear cardies pretty much with everything. Hard to say if I started last night or last month. I started knitting last night after a month of calculating and swatching. But it’s on the needles now!

Some Invaluable Resources:
http://knitty.com/ISSUEwinter04/FEATwin04TBP.html
http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEwinter05/FEATwin05TBP.html