Show us Your Other Sweater!

So...When this blog started (in spring 2008!), I was cataloging unfinished objects (UFOs in the parlance of hardcore knitters).  One of the items I didn't list was the blue/green silk sweater.  For some reason I thought I would just link to the past blog post where I talked about this.  When I checked this morning, I see I never talked about it at all.  What that tells me is that in 2008 this sweater was so long unfinished that I wasn't even thinking of it as a project!

I know I started it while we were living at the old house. So that means it definitely predates Fall 2005.  As near as I can tell, I got the yarn at Stitches 2002. Mom probably remembers!  I fell in love with this 100% silk hand-dyed yarn at the Tess Yarns booth.  At that time I wasn't really knitting much at all.  I was mostly spinning.  But the shine of the yarn, the color of the yarn, the density of the skein in my hand....  I decided I was getting it.  I had no pattern in mind, but I wanted to make sure I had enough yarn.  So I grabbed a second skein.  These are really large skeins so I figured two would be enough for anything I wanted to make.  It wasn't until I got to the register that I discovered that each skein was about $50!  By that time I had fallen in love so I got them and considered my Stitches purchases done!

All this build-up!  Are you curious?  Well, sometime between 2002 and 2005 I decided to make a lace cardigan using a 1958 pattern I had in a pile of old knitting magazines.

I started it, deciding that I would knit it in one piece rather than in pieces.  I figured out how to do this, cast on, and knit away!  I got pretty far before it stalled.  Here is how it looked a few days ago.

 The body was almost finished and I started to get worried.  The armholes for the raglan sleeves look too deep and I still had more decreasing to do before i was at the neckline.  Hmmm.... What do I do?  Was I not as careful as I should have been as I did the decreases?  Not having done much knitting from patterns, I was pretty cavalier about counting. Was it the stretch of the silk fiber making it too long?  Silk isn't bouncy the way wool is and I didn't know too much about fiber substituting back then.  I was stumped.  I put it away.  The answer didn't come to me in my sleep!  It stayed put away.  I even bought a basket to keep it in at another Stitches!  It's not an unfinished project, its a reason to buy a pretty basket!

 

So now I feel ready to tackle this project.  I have ripped it back to the armpits.  I have practiced bottom up raglans all in one piece (the two baby sweaters) so I won't have to have seams up the raglan shoulders.  I'm still not quite sure about the size of the armholes.  But I am going to move down to the smaller size on the pattern to do the rest of it, including the sleeves.  I understand the structure, so I can speed up the decreases if I need to.  This sweater is getting finished!  Look how beautiful it is!