OK, y’all, here it is: A neck, a body and two sleeves. I realize the way I’m standing in some of these pics, it looks like one sleeve is shorter than the other. I swear it’s not — I’m just too lazy to reshoot. I actually wanted the sleeves to be a hair longer than they are, and hedged my bets thinking they’d get longer when I blocked it, but I’m super happy with this. See: I’m even smiling in a picture!
I’m pretty proud of how well I did customizing the fit, even though it’s really not hard (and not quite perfect). When I took that class from Barry Klein back in January, the most memorable thing he said was, “If your top-down sweater doesn’t fit you, you have only yourself to blame. Because it means you didn’t try it on enough.” I could have knit this strictly to the pattern, or even left out the hip shaping entirely, and it would have been great, albeit a different shape. But I challenged myself to make a truly custom-tailored sweater. So each time I was working on it, when I was ready to knit my last round for the night, I instead knit half a round onto a second needle of the same size, allowing me to pull all four needle ends loose and ease the sweater over my head. And that way I knew exactly what i needed to do next, session by session. That was the key to my success. Thanks, Barry!
.
The yarn is Malabrigo Rios in Aguas, about 645 yards. Pattern is the HIGHLY recommended Classic Raglan Pullover by Jane Richmond. I’ll detail my minor mods at Ravelry. Thanks for all the cheerleading!
.
Ummm … remember how I originally bought four skeins of this Malabrigo, and later found two more? The latter were of a different dye lot. Given the nature of the yarn I wasn’t too worried about it, but I did mean to set them aside and hope I didn’t need them. Instead I forgot to do that and have now managed to use one ball from each batch. Without noticing until, y’know, eight inches later. (The peril of only knitting at night, in dim light.)
