Iced Sweater from Knitty DONE!!!

Yay! This definitely was a slog-a-long! I started it in July of 2010 and finished it in July of 2012. Sound the horns, where is my knitting tiara!!

But in my defense it was a long road. I had many gauge issues, due to using a yarn that was thick and thin (Colinette Point Five in the colorway Cardinal,) bought, of course for another pattern, then frogged, (see this post).  Now this yarn is a beautiful, hand painted yarn, which is why I bought it, but I detested knitting with it. It seemed to suck all of the moisture out of my hands, (this may just be me). So I had to knit in small increments of time. The skeins are only 55 yds in 100 gms, so I had a crazy strategy of using multiple circular needles to knit it with. I had one circular at the collar, and bottom, and one circular on each sleeve. (gauge issue post here)

 

I had the body done, kept the live stitches on all of my circular needles and figured, due to my limited number of balls of yarn, I would knit the essential parts of the pattern first, I decided I could make it into a vest if necessary. This involved me knitting a couple of rows here and a couple there, with 4 balls attached. I was pleased to finish the collar and decided I could make the sweater short if necessary, but ended up getting it a good length. From there I progressed to the sleeves, I had 4 balls and decided to knit until they were gone. Two rows on one sleeve then the other. Hey I could do an odd length of sleeve in between wrist and elbow. Well, by the time I ran out of yarn, it was just above the elbows, Ick, (another post here, you can see my many circular needles attached, ha!)

By that time the yarn colorway was discontinued! Ugh!! I shopped and shopped, consulting many LYS employees and fellow knitters, what color/yarn could I finish my sleeves in? After much gnashing and grinding of teeth, it was decided that I had to have more of the original yarn.(search for matching yarn post here)

So with help from some great knitters on Ravelry and Knitters Review, I was pointed to an Ebay seller in the Netherlands that had 4 skeins. I bit the bullet and bought two more. I didn’t want to put more money into this sweater but was” all in” at this point to finish it.

It took about 3 weeks to get the extra skeins and they were indeed the correct color and matched great!

At that point all I had to do was finish the sleeves. You will not believe the amount of yarn I had left over!!

I’m very, very happy with the results! Love the yarn, it is so bulky, I think I will wear this as a sweater coat.

The sweater in the pattern has toggle closures, I haven’t decided what to put on mine yet!

As an aside here is my hair with color one year ago at my brothers wedding. As you can see now, my hair is totally grown out. No color, liberated from the bondage of every two weeks of coloring it!