Sweater Progress

This past week I finished the knitting on the sweater!

Not having knit something like this before, I was prepared to be ecstatic!  However, as I bound off the last stitch I saw that I still had a lot of work ahead of me.  I chose a pattern that was mostly a single color.  I think in the original there were one or two rows of color B in the reverse stockinette welts.  In mine I did the stockinette welts in color A and the reverse stockinette in color B.  In the pattern, the ends of color B in the main body are used to create a fringe.  I wasn't planning to do the fringe.  I thought I was just modifying the color, no big deal.  However, because the welts in my pattern have an odd number of rows, the start and end of the yarn for a welt is not on the same side.  I have now noticed that in the patterns with alternating color welts, the welts have an even number of rows.  That would have led to fewer ends, because the colors would have been starting and ending on the same side.  The way I did it, I had to break the yarn and start fresh on every welt in the sleeves and bodice.  Live and learn!

The result of my "originality" is that I have about a million (in truth, about one hundred) ends to weave in.  Even if I decide to use the fringe, there are ends that aren't in the main body of the sweater that have to be woven in.  So maybe that brings me down to about seventy-five ends to weave in.

Yikes!  After the ends are woven in I need to block it.  As you can see in the pictures below, it looks really small. It needs to be washed and stretched out to its shape.  I'm not worried about it being too small.  The welts pull it in quite a bit--kind of like ribbing on a sock--and it is meant to be stretched out when blocked.  Also, I wanted a shorter, more jacket-like sweater.  The pattern I made was for one of the shorter swirls.  To block it, I need to get one of those puzzle piece rubber mats.  I thought about a blocking board or foam core, but don't want to have to store something large.  The rubber mat pieces are about 2x2 squares when you take them apart.  The sweater won't fit on the twin bed I have been using to block the shawls.  I could use the queen bed, but then where would EE and I sleep while it dried? ;-)

Finally, I also have a very long seam to sew.  Before I can do that I have to teach myself (I love Youtube!!) the official way to sew knitting together.  I have seamed my knitting before.  It looked fine, but that was because it was in a place that really didn't show, or because it was on a project (like a toy) where the seam had to be strong, not pretty and the inside wouldn't show.  THIS project is somewhat reversible.  The inside flips out to be the collar.  I would love to have it be totally reversible, since the look of each side is slightly different.  So I have to learn how to do nice seams that look good on both sides.

So, to make this long story short, I have miles to go before this sweater is done! Meanwhile, here are a couple of photos of it at this point.  I'm really happy with how it came out.