TGIF! And A Finish

I love Fridays.  I only work half a day for one thing.  Another reason is Friday Night Sewing at my aunt's house.  The only time that's not a joy is if the weather is really cold, and I have to come home via a cold walk to the street to get into my cold car.  Which eventually warms up, but in the meantime -- brrrr!


We usually all wear red on Fridays in honor of The Troops.  We have family who have served or are serving in the military, and we thank them for their service.

This week in keeping with the weekday themes people seem to be doing of matching a word to the first letter of the day, I'm posting a Friday Finish. 


I'm following up on my resolution and I hope it can be fun!

I'm talking about my green lace sweater. I feel like I've knit the equivalent of two sweaters due to my inability to follow the very simple lace pattern... LOL!  When I finally set stitch markers every two lace patterns I thought I'd solved it, but even that didn't help.  I'm hopeless.


It's finally complete.  Sleeve progress was just as slow as the rest of it.  I knit the first sleeve twice, and had to completely rip it back at the point where it was about 4 inches long.  Each inch is five rows, each column of the lace pattern is seven stitches and there are 10 of them.  That's 1,400 stitches.  Then I had to pull out two rows, un-knitting each stitch so I didn't lose the yarn overs.  Oh don't tell me I don't know how to have fun!

Once the first sleeve was done, the second had to match.  Duh.  I tried counting the patterns and thought I had it just exactly right, then I knit the cuff and bound off, only to find that the first sleeve was about 3/4 of an inch longer.


Grrrr...

This is the original sleeve cuff design.  I changed it, see below.

I have no idea why the Inspector hadn't told me that while it was happening.

She kept her advice to herself...

Once it was done, and I had tried it on, I decided that the garter stitch cuffs were too bulky and made me look like the Michelin Man.  That was 2 inches of cuff, so approximately 700 stitches.  Each.


Off the came, and I knitted a small ribbed cuff instead.  Now it just needs a good soak and blocking. 

Finished is better than perfect, right?

I skipped the buttonholes because I want to use one of those scarf fasteners instead of buttons.  I hope the sleeves are not too bulky when I actually wear it.  They are not going to fit inside of most of my coats, but it will make a nice spring/fall jacket alternative.


Too bad it's not red...


If you're interested in the pattern, it's February Lady Sweater and it's free on ravelry.com.


And thanks to a few blogs I read including Patchwork Times by Judy Laquidara in Texas, I have some 'replacement' yarn coming via UPS some time next week.  She would have to remind me that Eat-Sleep-Knit dot com was having a sale.  The rest is history.


That's my story and I'm sticking to it.


Knit on...