April Lady Sweater

As I was pulling out yarn for the next project I'm planning, I spied a nearly finished sweater in the back of the linen closet and felt compelled to do something about it already. And, so I did.

There's so much to say about this sweater that it's kind of hard to know where to begin. The yarn is Cascade 220 that was reclaimed from my very first sweater, which left a lot to be desired.

My first sweater was knit using Barbara Walker's guidelines in Knitting from the Top. While it's an amazing book (and I should have known better), I ignorantly followed every general sizing recommendation she made instead of customizing it to fit my body. Needless to say, I ended up with a man-sized tunic with very dramatic waist shaping. Thankfully, there isn't any photographic evidence of this catastrophe to share here.

I'm pleased as punch that I was able to give that unfortunate sweater a new life as a, if I do say so myself, much better sweater. The new sweater is, of course, the ubiquitous February Lady Sweater. I cast on back in December but just finished last weekend. The actual knitting only took about a month, but the sweater had to sit in "time out" for awhile. (Surely I'm not the only one who does this?)

To be completely honest, I made a somewhat monumental mistake early on in this project: In the increase round, I accidentally added too many stitches in the sleeves. So when I went to go knit the first sleeve, I had the horrifying realization that I could fit my entire head into the sleeve.

I was too mad at myself to rip it all out, so I threw the whole mess into the back of the linen closet. After stewing about it for a couple months, I realized that I could just omit the extra underarm stitches and incorporate a few strategically placed decreases, and viola! Sleeves I can't fit my head into.

Unfortunately, my knitting progress is about to slow way, way down for awhile. As I was pouring a cup of tea Monday morning, boiling water splashed out of the cup onto my left hand. I have a sizable second degree burn on the top of my hand that requires near hand-mummification to keep protected, making knitting slow and awkward.

It's going to be a long couple of weeks.