I just completed my first sweater. Me, girl with the attention span and the motivation of your average earthworm, has completed a completely wearable piece of clothing when not so long ago the whole concept of knitting seemed too bizarre to grasp. Think about it. Take a pair of pointy-ended chopsticks and a longish piece of yarn, do some manual gymnastics and you have cloth. Someone had to sit and DELIBERATELY, CONSCIOUSLY come up with the whole concept of casting on, knitting, purling, shaping, etc. etc. Why? How?

first sweater observations

So satisfying.
Not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. Even though there were some moments of total befuddlement.
It took longer to seam than to knit. It took longer to weave in the loose ends than to seam.
On that note, I unknowingly picked the best pattern to use as my first sweater. It uses raglan sleeves, which does not involve arithmetic puzzles before seaming. Raglan sleeves have the same number of stitches on the sides, from armhole to neck, as it sides of the front and back panels, from armhole to neck. Just seam and go.

if i were to make this sweater again, i would...

decrease the gauge even more by using smaller needles. Size 6? Still a tad too drapey.
not shape the waist. The pattern called for waist-shaping (series of decreases around the waist, then increase again towards the armpits), which seamed very comely, when not on self. It ended up making this unsightly bulge under the armpits, where the increases started again. Maybe it was the drape of this yarn (which is different than what the original pattern called for). I'm going to have to walk around with my arms stitched to my sides to flatten the bulge.
take better care shaping the neckline. Use another bind-off technique on the sloped edges to avoid having it look steppy. The raggedy and uneven edges turned into small holes when I picked up stitches for the collar.
make the sleeves a little longer.
make the turtleneck longer, and maybe in a 3x3 rib instead of 2x2 rib.
keep the length the same
decrease width of back panel by an inch. The original pattern had the cable going down the back as well -- I thought this would look funny, so I omitted it and did straight Stockinette stitch. It did occur to me that this will make the back wider than the front (cables pull the stitches in), but went ahead and did not adjust. Well, now my sweater is slightly bulging in the back.
stitch edges in selvedge to make seaming easier. Trying to find the running thread next to the curling end stitch was a pain. The sweater is slightly asymmetrical towards the bottom, and pulling to the left. Grrr.

DETAILS
Pattern:Simply Marilyn by Debbie Bliss
Yarn: alpaca/wool blend that I got in Taipei. Brand is "Monty." Says it's Made in Paris.
# of Balls: 7.5
Gauge: 20 stitches/4 inches on #7 needles

TECHNIQUES:
Cable: horseshoe cable
Decreases: ssk, k2tog
Increases: m1
Neck shaping: short rows
Collar: picking up stitches; knitting in the round
Seaming: mattress stitch (invisible vertical on stockinette; invisible horizontal on bound-off edges)

The original calls for 12 sts/4 in, and the smallest size seemed really big. With the yarn I used, I knitted in the pattern's largest size to make an XS sweater.

Knitting in a smaller gauge also fixed the 'problem' of having that gaping neckhole, which heard from other people prevented the sweater from staying on.

You can get the pattern for free here.

in the queue The best part of finishing a project - other than wearing the project - is starting a new one. The next in the queue is this from Phildar's Tendances Automne 04/05.

I'm substituting the yarn again, but the gauge is the same so I shouldn't have to make any changes.

eeeYAAAAAAAAAAH!

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Filed Under: Completed Projects | Marilyn