Must have finally finished!

… as in, “surely you must have finally finished your Must Have Cardigan!”  This project definitely was a crock pot kind of knit rather than a stir fry or a pressure cooker sort. Kristina and I cast on together on September 1, 2008.  I took a hiatus from the project around the holidays, but finished knitting in March 2009.  I finished seaming and knitting the buttonband sometime in the summer, and finally bought buttons (in Boston) and sewed them on in July.  But YOU haven’t seen it since then, because it hadn’t been photographed.  Well, here it is – ta-dah! The sleeves are a tiny bit long but I’m still happy with them.  I kept some notes about what I learned knitting this sweater.  Here is what I want to remember for the next sweater project:

1. Adjust the rib pattern on the waist so that it flows into the main pattern. There’s really no reason that this waistband shouldn’t flow nicely into the main pattern, but it doesn’t.
2. I found it a little difficult to pick up stitches for the buttonband from reverse stockinette. It is SO EASY to pick them up in stockinette, but in reverse stockinette, there is no neat little “channel” to stay in. I will modify future patterns to avoid this situation.
3. In future pieces which require seaming, I will remember to put the increase/decrease stitches at least 2 stitches in from the edge that will be seamed. The increases/decreases got in the way of following a nice neat channel when seaming.
4. I will consider changing needle size downward for part of the sweater body in order to create subtle waist shaping. (I thought about doing this before I started this project, but frankly, I forgot once I was in the heat of things. This sweater is a bit boxy and could do with a little shaping!)

I have a tendency to overbuy yarn for large projects, fearing that I will run out.  Initially I had 16 balls of this (Knit Picks Wool of the Andes, color “lake ice heather,” 110 yards/ball, 1760 yards total).  I can only find 4 untouched balls in my stash now, so I guess I used 11-12 balls in all.  I’m still hazy about whether my initial swatching ball was included in the 16-ball count (I swatched a lot for this project, in 5 different yarns).  Well, anyway, I guess this sweater used about 12 balls, around 1300 yards.

Watch for me wearing it next week!