Let’s close the book on this one

I feel badly to have subjected my small band of readers to this sweater for so long. My notes say that I cast on in January and finally finished seaming last week. But my most loyal readers know that I first knit the yarn in 2014 and ripped it out before finishing the project because the fit was so bad.

I finished working the second sleeve while we were in Texas last month, but then the pieces sat around waiting to be seamed for a while. Last weekend I got serious about it and started sewing. As expected, the sweater is big and baggy on me:

I was starting to consider hanging onto it as an “around the house” schluppy kind of sweater. Then, on a whim, S1 tried it on. And you know what? It’s serviceable on her:

She asks you to please excuse her fluffy hair. We were at soccer games on the morning of the photo shoot and it was VERY windy, which fluffs her hair up. My hair was in a hat, which leads to photos that are less than glamorous in a different way.

On the plus side, I used my new craft clips to hold sweater pieces together while seaming, and they worked GREAT! I preferred working with them to using locking stitch markers, which is what I usually do. 

Also, I used the sewn-on approach to the neck band again, and it worked smoothly. I like the pattern, which is called “Leaf Vein Insertion” in Nicky Epstein’s The Essential Edgings Collection (p. 106). I modified the edges a bit and worked the two sides of the neckband separately, both from the bottom up. Then I grafted the edges together at the back of the neck. Also, I slipped the first stitch of the row that would be exposed on the edge, for a clean finish. All of this worked exactly as I envisioned and I’m pleased with the result. S1 even likes it, and she normally doesn’t care for open cardigans.

I’m still not exactly sure what went wrong with this sweater. I guess my gauge changed over time. I worked a swatch before starting Sprig in 2014, and I did not make a new swatch before starting this sweater in 2016. That’s probably where the difference crept in. LESSON LEARNED.

The final sweater weighs 546 grams, which translates to 10.92 skeins of yarn. I had 12 skeins to begin with, but I don’t have a spare unwound skein now. I guess the difference is in the final partial ball plus swatches.

I’m just glad to be done with this one.