A third of a sweater!

I had no idea that I was quite this close...



I finished the back of Ljod today during some unexpected waiting time at the mechanic... I'd just had my car in for a scheduled service last week, and when they checked the battery, they didn't hook it back up correctly. So basically, my battery had been slowly draining itself dead over the last week, and finally had it today. And when I say it was dead, I mean so dead that the dashboard clock and all of my radio presets reset themselves. Anyway, they fixed it for free and totally owned up to what had happened, so I give them credit for not trying to pull one over on me (although I may see if they feel like giving me a free oil change, since I had to miss a couple of hours of work to have them correct this).

The knitting progress makes up for it a bit. :)

The armholes look uneven in the picture there, mostly because it's not pinned out. I ran an iron over it to get the edges to stop curling so I could get a picture... better blocking will happen while I'm at work tomorrow.

Ljod coming along

Know what's fun? Working in a library a couple of weeks before HP7 comes out. There are a few people there who haven't read the books and have no interest in it whatsoever... but the rest of us are geeking out pretty hardcore. I'll see if I can get some pictures of what's happened to the circ desk. I can;t wait to see what the place looks like for our big HP program, since this is just some early prep work that they're doing.

Hit a nice progress point on Ljod yesterday:


And since you can't see it in that picture above...


I've started binding off for the armholes. It's earlier than the pattern says to start, but I had the realization that, if I follow the pattern for length, I'm going to have a sweater that's 28" long. I don't want to envision myself in a sweater that big. Actually, that would be a very good guarantee that I'd never wear it.

And the totally unexpected good news I got today: the state tax people are giving me a refund! I thought I owed money to them, but it turns out that I didn't even have to file because I was working part-time for most of the year. I came home to find a nice check in my mail, and had absolutely no clue that it was coming. *grin*

Look! Cables!

Guess what I did with Day One of my weekend...



Yep. That's a finished cabled knot! What a great first "real" cabling project -- all of the cablework on the back is done, and now I can work on the rest of the back without a great deal of concentration.

NOT working with that concentration led to me decrease a stitch somewhere in the middle of one of these knots. Of course it couldn't have happened in one of the the stockinette sections. I blame myself. I decided to knit while watching Children of Men. I am dumb like this from time to time. Excellent movie, but not knit-friendly.

On a different pattern, I'd just add a stitch somewhere and move on... but doing that in the middle of a symmetrical cable pattern looked weird -- yes, I tried. I was hoping in vain that I'd be able to fake it. No way. I ended up dropping the knot section back 4 rows, to a row that I knew was right, and knitted that section over. Of course, after I dropped it back and had those strands hanging there, I had that wonderful "I've made a huge mistake, I just made it worse, I'll have to frog the whole thing" moment. However, somewhere out there, the patron saint of knitting took pity on me. I'm still in awe that it actually worked. :)

Anyway: yay, cables! Especially when you pay attention to them!

When swatching is a good idea

So, I started Ljod on Sunday during the series premiere of Drive (knitting + a glass of wine + Nathan Fillion = happy me).



As you can see, I mini-swatched for this. Good thing I did, and didn't just wing it with the recommended needles like I usually do. Size 6 (the needles called for in the pattern) gave me a really lovely drapey fabric that had no structure to it at all. It's not evident in the picture there, but the fabric was fairly open-weave... NOT ideal for cablework, even minor cablework like this pattern has.

Size 5 it is, then. :)

Downside to this... my first two long sleeved sweaters took about 6 months apiece for me to finish. Both were done on size 7s. A sweater on size 5s? Let's say that I'm prepared to be joined to this project for a while. Also, I still have a second Go With The Flow sock to do, and while I know I want a little break (that's one very repetitive lace pattern there), I don't want to let too much time go by before starting the second one.

Anyway, I've got about 2" of the back done, which includes the start of the inset cable design. The cables actually look halfway decent! I've only ever done cables in yarn that completely hides them, so I'm really glad I'm not terrible at them.