Surprise! I finished that *$%@ sweater

I wonder if anyone even remembers this sweater? I started it in July 2019, after buying the yarn at MDSW in May of 2019. But I hit a MAJOR pause in January of this year when I found breaks in my yarn (see Yarn 911) that I quickly determined were caused by carpet beetles. I shoved everything into ziploc bags - the sweater (still on the needles), the yarn, and the basket they were in - and banished them all to the freezer. I moved them in and out a couple of times. I have no idea if this was effective for carpet beetles. I know it's a solid plans for moths, because freezing temperatures kill larvae and moths but not eggs. The idea is to kill any larvae and moths you have, then leave them at room temperature for a couple of weeks to give any eggs time to hatch, and then freeze them again. 

After the freezer escapades, I left everything in the ziploc bag for months. Finally, around the start of September, I unzipped the bags and took a close look under bright light. I found no evidence of more beetles. So I cautiously resumed knitting. I was fairly close to done, as things go - I had to finish the bottom band of garter stitch (15 garter ridges over 371 stitches) and then work the sleeves. 

I finished on September 13 and blocked it.

Then I put the whole thing back in a ziploc bag JUST IN CASE. 

It took until today to get some photos. Finally, there's a chill in the air and the leaves are starting to turn. It's sweater weather! Good for twirling!

This sweater has a ton of stitches in it. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I said "sure, I'll knit an oversized sweater from fingering weight yarn" - but this is what I got. I think I'll enjoy wearing it. 

I'm still thinking about whether to have another go at the fix on the original hole. I pretty much just ran a bunch of sewing thread around the hole to sort of graft it together. Unfortunately, it's right on the lapel, in a very visible spot. Not good:

I did not find this sweater to be super relaxing to knit, unfortunately. I had to make my own spreadsheets to follow multiple stitch patterns and decreasing rates. And it was all knit in one piece, so it wasn't portable at all. 

The finished sweater weighs 400 grams even. I have about 11 grams of yarn left over, plus a bunch tied up in swatches that I could unravel. The original skein supposedly weighed 400 grams, so this is kind of surprising. I made the medium size.

The pattern is really cool, though.

I'm so glad to have this off my WIP list!