October 20th: This is another case of yarn being bought in 2008 and not getting used until now! I had cast on a couple of months after the purchase, but the sweater I had in mind wasn’t working out, and I didn’t want to have to make it up myself. Eventually the perfect pattern came around. My dad has purchased a few pure wool sweaters from the Maritimes (most recently Newfoundland), but I feel that when you have a knitter for a daughter, she should make you at least one. We picked out the yarn on a visit to PEI in 08, and I’m finally starting, the day before my dad’s birthday!
October 22nd: Finished both saddle shoulders and started the back, with a lot of stitch markers in use. I’m so grateful to the other knitters on Ravelry who have made this; the construction is confusing to me, never having knit a top-down saddle shoulder Aran before. I don’t think I’ll even try to predict when this will get finished.
October 24th: I am such a product knitter! My gauge is about 7 rows per inch, and the back is measured from the centre of the saddle, so I’ve got just over 2 inches done for the back now, out of 9 inches. I love seeing the pattern develop, the designer is a genius! Hopefully I’ll be able to keep all the charts straight. At least they’re all in multiples of 2: 2 rows for chart A, 24 rows for chart B, 4 rows for chart C, 8 rows for chart D.
November 14th: The various cables are not actually too hard to memorize. I only really need to look at the chart for B, and I’ve memorized the others, more or less. I thought that chart D would be the toughest, but it develops quite logically and predictably. There hasn’t been much progress lately; there was a missing cable needle incident, then a Christmas prezzie to cast one. Getting back on track now. It won’t be done anytime soon, though.
December 12th: Oddly enough, even though I’m on an overseas holiday at the moment, I’ve made a ton of progress in a very short time! I had put it aside while working on a tree skirt for my mom, and just picked it up again in the past few days. I finished the back to the point where the stitches are on a holder, and knitted the left and right fronts up until they join, plus about an inch past that. I did change needle sizes when I started the fronts (up to a 4.5 mm) because the back felt a bit tight. It’s loosened up nicely now, and I don’t think the gauge is terribly different. The only problem in the foreseeable future would be that I only brought two balls of yarn with me, so once I burn through those, I’ll have to let it sit again. Oh well!
Feb 15th: I’m on the first of the two sleeves, and aside from the “seam” slowly migrating to the left when I decrease every 4th round, things are going alright, albeit at a snail’s pace. I’m trying to knit 7 rounds a day, since that’s my row gauge per inch. I had my dad measure his arm length from the shoulder to cuff (with arm bent), and it’s 27 inches. My goodness. To think that once this sleeve is done, I have another to do just like it. But then it’ll just be the body left.
April 26th: I finished the first sleeve yesterday and am a couple of inches in on the second one. Luckily I checked the sleeve against my dad’s arm, otherwise I would have knitted too much and then had to rip back. How demoralizing that would have been!
I still have three full skeins of the yarn left, so I wonder if I’ll have to order any more at all. Maybe one or two, depending on how the body goes. It IS 286 sts around…
May 17th: My self-imposed goal for this month is to finish the second sleeve. Thanks to a wedding on Saturday (and a long break between the ceremony and reception) I’m almost done the decreases, and I only have about 3 repeats of chart B left. Also, I found an extra skein of the yarn in my stash, hurray!
May 27th: I finished the second sleeve, and I’m ripping back the cuff on the first sleeve to re-knit it with 4 mm needles, since it looks way better. I’ll do the collar next (maybe I’ll finish that by the end of May?) and then… on to the body.
June 1st: I bound off the collar today, and worked 2 rounds of the body. It’s not as bad so far as I had thought; sure, the rounds are long, but it’s not as hard to keep track of what you’re doing, compared with shorter rounds. By my estimate, the body will need about 120 rounds before the ribbing. If I can do only 2 rounds a day, I’ll be done in two months. That sounds terribly slow, but I’d be happy to finish this sweater in less than a year! I’ve been at it on and off for seven and a half months now.
July 19th: Still plugging away at the body; I’ve got just under 12 inches to go before I decrease and work 3 inches of ribbing. I’m also down to my last ball of yarn, and I’ll probably need to order one or two more, but I want to see how far this ball gets me first. When I started the body, I was working with a half-finished ball, and I want to get a better estimate of how much I’ll need. For my own reference, I’m joining in the new ball in the first half of round 3.
July 27th: Ordered 3 additional skeins of 3-ply medium yarn from MacAuslands today, as I’m almost finished the last ball!
August 3rd: Yarn arrived today! Thank goodness. I was getting ansty to finish.
August 5th: Last night, I finished off the baby blanket I had been working on the interim, so I’m back to knitting this sweater. In the 30 degree heat. 9 inches to go before the ribbing. Let’s see how long I can go before casting on something new.
August 9th: As it turns out, I lasted until yesterday without casting on something new; my circular needle broke, and I don’t have another one in that size. I started a baby sweater.
September 29th: I cast off the body today! My dad tried it on and, as we had suspected, the sleeves were too long, so I’m going to rip them back by about three inches. I find them unnecessarily voluminous at the top, but there’s no way I’m ripping back that far. This thing needs to be off the needles.
September 30th: And done. Blocking and washing to follow, but that’s nothing. And about three or four ends to sew in.
October 2nd: The sweater was washed and blocked last night, and is taking its sweet time to dry on my living room table. My dad is so excited to wear it!
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