It's a bit late for the Feb/March Project Spectrum party, but it's finished and whew, I'm relieved! This thing was becoming a wintry weight around my neck, and with all the finishing details required (zippers, cuffs, bottom band, etc.) I was seriously procrastinating.

I don't think this is my best sweater but I don't dislike it either. Substituting a different yarn (and a rather rustic hand-spun one at that!) required a lot of calculations. Despite all my work to convert the pattern, the pieces still didn't have the exact shape required. After decreasing the raglan portions to the proper length, I ended up with much wider tops than there was supposed to be, resulting in a too-large neck opening. I made the collar band as short as I dared and probably eased in a good 7 or 8 inches (!) of neck opening while attaching the collar. Still, the collar seems a bit gaping to me but I think I can live with it. I also couldn't find cute toggles like the ones in the pattern photo but I can easily replace those if I find better ones.

The ever-fascinating "wrong side" shot:
I had a lot of yarn left over. I'm not sure what I'll do with it...
Pattern Notes:
"Maine Fair-Isle Cardigan", AKA Pattern #28 from Vogue Knitting Winter 2004/2005. Knit in 100% wool yarn purchased from a local hobby farm.

I didn't have any problems with the pattern. I do think there are some small errors near the beginning of the pattern in terms of how many stitches you should have on the needle. Since I was calculating my own numbers anyway, I didn't get too involved in trying to figure out if there really was a problem, but I wrote a bit about it here.

Overall I am fairly pleased with the final product. However this thing is heavy and I don't think there will be many days that it will be comfortable to wear it, even up here!

Even if it doesn't look like spring here, I'm ready to start some spring knitting. I've gathered the yarn for Caister, from the newest Rowan #41 and it looks so cheerful and bright:I was totally boring and bought the "suggested" colors, but with only internet purchasing available to me I didn't dare try to substitute! That usually results in disaster for me. And, it so happens that two of the three Project Spectrum colors for April/May are represented here: Pink and Green! Whee!

Happy April to all! I hope your weather is looking a bit more spring-like than here. Forecast for this week:
Monday--Chance of Snow (2 to 5 inches)
Tuesday--Chance of Rain/Snow
Wednesday--Chance of Rain/Snow
Thursday--Snow Likely

Blech.

I guess the weather is trying to keep me in the mood to finish my cardigan, even though I really want to start something in cotton. After much foot-dragging, I finally wove the ends in and blocked it. Here's the body:There will be more knitting, to make the bands for the bottom, the collar, and the cuffs. I wanted to try to get a lot of the finishing done this weekend, but ended up doing a lot of running around. Plus keeping poor G company, who has been battling a nasty flu since Thursday. The saddest part is that he was supposed to fly down to NY to visit his sister and had to cancel the trip. I went to the library to pick up some books for him, but when one is spending 24 hrs a day in the house they get kinda bored. I bet he totally wishes he knew how to knit now, ha ha.

I also spent Saturday trying to find a separating zipper for the cardi, which was a total pain in the ass. The selection of 20" zippers was rather limited, I was hoping for a cream colored one but the closest thing they had was blinding white with silver zipper. I will have to see if it will work but if not that will delay this poor sweater even further.

Last weekend I visited my friend who had her baby a few weeks ago. Here he is with his hand-knitted loot:Altogether now, "Awww...."

The weather yesterday was totally disgusting...it snowed 8 or 10 inches overnight on Friday but on Saturday it changed to ice and sleet all day. The cars were encased in ice and the snow on top of the windshield and hood was all crusty.Our driveway gets too full of snow by the end of winter to fully plow it (nowhere to push the snow!). Our plow guy loves to push at as far as he can, which usually leads to a giant bank of snow right at our front door. Poor G had to shovel through and ended up with a snow bank almost as tall as me!It was a good day to stay in, knit, watch movies, and also make a super St. Patricks day meal. Here's my vegetarian version of it:This is a veggie reuben, with boiled potatoes, carrots, and cabbage on the side. What is a veggie reuben, you ask? It's homemade bean burger with sauerkraut and "special sauce" (mayo, russian dressing, and relish), all on rye bread and grilled in a pan with butter. It's really yummy! And of course I had to make some Irish Soda Bread:The only thing we forgot to get was some Guinness :( Oh well!
Earlier this week I finished the first arm of the Maine Fair-Isle Cardigan, so I pinned the pieces together to do a preliminary try-on:I think it is going to fit OK. The fronts are all curling up which is why it looks like the fronts don't meet. The only really messed-up part is that the neck opening is larger than it should be. Hopefully I can get the collar on without it looking too strange! I finished the second sleeve yesterday so now I need to block the pieces. Anyone want to help weave in ends?? ;)

Hooray for snow! We are supposed to get up to 20 inches, so they let us out of work early and now I have to whole afternoon to goof around! We already got about 8 or 10 inches and the heavy stuff isn't supposed to start until around 4 PM. I must say, even though we haven't had a ton of snow up 'til now, we have been really blessed with beautiful, fluffy, powdery snow when we do get it (including now). Definitely unusual for the northeast (more commonly it seems to be wet, back-breaking stuff).

I put together a mosaic of photos featuring this month's Project Spectrum colors of blue, gray, and white:(Original photos can be viewed on Flickr)

And as for my Project Spectrum cardigan...
It's looking quite nice, but underneath that pretty exterior there is a dark side! The cardigan's been in "time out" for the last couple days due to some concerns about whether this thing is going to properly fit! I'm not sure if I calculated wrong, or if my gauge has changed while knitting, or if I just didn't swatch properly...but the proportions just seem wonky. The body is knit in one piece (back and forth), and then you divide and work the raglan decreases separately for the back and fronts. The bottom part that wraps around the whole body seems a bit big. Then, the fair-isle part seems to have a much smaller gauge than I measured, so that part is a bit tight. Hrmph!

I ended up doing a "pre-block" (as shown above), pinning and spraying it with water to see if the fair-isle would stretch to an acceptable size. It definitely did stretch, but I still think this thing may look pretty funny in the end. Oh well, I've decided to at least finish the front panels and maybe that will give me a better idea of whether it's going to work. This is a pretty fast knit so I don't have much to lose.

Now, I'm off to enjoy the rest of this snowy afternoon :)

Let's reveal the mystery project:Jana guessed the closest, it is indeed a stuffed animal...Sheldon the turtle. I knew I had to make this because my friend is decorating the baby's room with a turtle theme (her favorite animal). He's looking a bit sad here as he still doesn't have legs or a shell, but those are coming along quickly. I am using Plymouth Dreambaby DK yarn and it's awesome. It's extremely soft, machine wash/dry, and reasonably priced. I'm not sure how well it would hold up to repeated washing, but if that isn't a problem it would be a great yarn for baby garments. However, it wasn't a very close match in gauge to the recommended yarn for this pattern, so alterated it by making the body a bit wider and longer.

I am also getting ready for the kick-off of Project Spectrum. For February and March, the colors we are focusing on are blue, gray, and white. I just recently bought this yarn that I'm really excited about:
This is locally produced yarn, from a farm only about 20 minutes from us. I had seen their sheep grazing all summer and (of course) I wondered if they sold the wool. Lo and behold, they do! They also sell eggs from their chickens so we bought some of those too. The yarn comes only in the natural colors but there were a bunch of different pretty shades of gray, white and black. I am going to attempt to use it to make this sweater, from the VK fall/winter 2004-2005 issue:The only problem is that the homespun yarn has a somewhat different gauge that what's called for. I spent what seemed like a couple hours on Saturday trying to calculate the numbers to customize the pattern. In the course of things, I found what may to be a minor error in the pattern...for the increases prior to beginning chart #2, the instructions for two of the sizes (34.5 and 43) seems to have you increase to a number of stitches that is different than what is required for working Chart #2 per the instructions. Nothing that would be difficult to work around, but if you are thinking about this pattern see if you find a problem too (maybe I'm missing something?).

Here's a gauge swatch for a portion of the fair-isle chart:
I'm very happy with the colors and pattern, I think they go very well together. I am curious to see if my calculations were right and I can get it to come out to the size I want, though! Will it be success or disaster?? ;)