February. Finally. Finished

This post has been a long time coming.



The pattern: February Lady Sweater by Pamela Wynne (Free Ravelry download here)



The yarn: Cleckheaton Country 12ply Shade 1935 Light Blue. 10 balls bought in a batch off TradeMe and 15 (!)grams of an extra ball purchased from here. I will never again buy a sweater's worth of yarn from an auction site. I ran out of yarn even though the pattern notes indicated I should have had enough - The TM seller didn't have anymore and there was only one store in NZ I could find online who had some. The first ball they sent me went MIA (thanks NZPost) and so it was many weeks before I could "officially" finish. Let's just say a lesson has been learnt there



The time: Actually a reasonably quick knit. I was racing through this about 50g a night so probably about 2 weeks or thereabouts of actual knitting. Of course in reality it took me much longer -there was the few days it sat whilst waiting for buttons (tip - get buttons with your yarn, first button hole is 3 rows in!), then the very long wait for the extra yarn to finally arrive.


The lace: The picture above is Gull Lace. I will never ever ever do another pattern that uses gull lace. Ever.
I mentioned my struggles with this earlier, clever Judy said she used stitch markers to keep track across the lace repeats - a wonderfully simple idea (and stupidly obvious now) I wish I had thought of!! I did the sleeves on DPNs and did find them much easier (and they are error free) because there were 3 repeats on each needle.
There is a mistake on the main body of the sweater but it sits under my bust and its not that noticeable , even by me, and I know it is there , so I can live with that.




The verdict: I will never knit this pattern again but overall, despite an almost jinxed knitting experience, I do quite like it. While I was knitting I was never really sure if it was going to work on me but now it's done I'm quite happy.

I did the XXS/35 inch size even though I measure as 38. Preblocking this was pretty snug but afterwards it grew a bit and now its a perfect fit and I think a more flattering length too.

I wore it tonight- our first BBQ of the season - it was a lovely summer's night but there was a cold breeze. With 3/4 sleeves I think this is going to be worn all year round. I had visions of wearing this over a summer print dress ( which I have yet to find lol) but for now with jeans or a skirt and a singlet top underneath it will be great for BBQ season when the temperature drops. I like the style of the bodice and the shape of it, I think its going to be very wearable.

There are a couple of small things I'm not 100% happy with (its a bit bulky under the arms, I wouldn't pick up the extra 7 stitches if I was to redo) and I need to fix the buttonholes as they are a bit big but overall I'm pretty darn pleased that my sweater from hell turned out quite well in the end. Finally its DONE!!!



There are more pics on my flickr stream, including the outtakes :)
Thank you once again to M6 for the FO photography

PS. Are you knitting lace this summer? Bells is hosting a Long Lacy Summer KAL - its very low key but should be fun checking out what everyone is knitting this summer. I'm wanting to do some 'proper' lace just as soon as the madness that is Christmas gift knitting is over, but for now this sweater - with a bit of lace - should surely count as my first baby step into lace knitting