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I stayed up on Sunday night and pushed through to get the collar done. Just couldn’t leave it so close to completion. Monday I wove in ends. Tuesday I grafted the underarms and put it in the bath to relax and unwind.

So now it’s resting and leisurely air-drying in my office.

Done on July 30. Not bad. Went back and checked the blog record to see when I actually started this project, and it wasn’t quite as long ago as I’d remembered. I started the knitting mid-May, so it’s only been 2 ½ months. Of course, I had a little less than half of the yarn spun before I started, so that helped.

Still have to order the zipper from www.ZipperSource.com and get it installed. That’ll be a whole ‘nother adventure.

I still may enter it in the NW Washington Fair (minus zipper).

I love the fair. So much fun. So many great fiber-bearing critters.

And it would be cool to have something in the wool show.

(It’s not like I’d be wearing it anytime soon, anyway.)

Things had been moving slowly on the Urban Aran of late, so last week I decided to set myself a deadline. I vowed not to let the knitting of said sweater lap over into August.

So this weekend I got down to it: the saddle -shouldering. I love the saddle shoulder. And I love EZ for coming up with a seamless way of doing it. I love how the shape is fluid, and preserves the vertical-ness of the ribbing and cable patterning. It makes so much sense and has a great fit, to boot.

I am in the final stretch now- working the extra short rows across the back of the neck Then I’ll knit a little bit of a stand-up collar, and that will be it. (Other than blocking, and weaving in ends, and sewing in a zipper- but that doesn’t count against my knitting deadline, so I think I’m good.)

Here is my favorite blue chair modeling the almost-done sweater:

And this is all the yarn I have left. It will pretty much dictate how much of a collar the sweater gets.

All I need is maybe 10-15 rows. Wish me luck-

I finally had some time this week to devote to Gigi of the velvety chocolate mousse fleece ( does that make her a Moose Sheep?).

I combed, and then spun it up in my usual long-ish draw method. Gigi’s wool is quite fine, and has a wonderful silky feel. It was such an easy spin- and the result is a beautiful lofty skein that is next-to-the-skin soft.

(My little swatch came out at 5.5 stitches to the inch- which seems about right for this yarn- a little finer than I usually spin)

A classic pairing would Gigi and some white alpaca (Mopetto!) for a Chocolate and Vanilla type of colorwork with a little bit of alpaca fuzz aura.

Mmmmm.

Maybe with some raspberry topping?

It’s sounding more like a sundae than a sweater all the time-

I’ve got raspberries on the brain- and thankfully in the garden as well!

Gotta love berry season-

Denise out.

I should have learned the first time.

I thought I HAD learned the first time.

But no, I went charging ahead, without checking back in with EZ, thinking “I know what I’m doing. I’ve make sweaters before. I’ll just string these parts together on a big long circular needle, and get on with it.”

And then at some point last week I stopped and picked up the book again.

The percentages. I’d forgotten all about the dag-gone percentages.

And as it turns out, my “eyeballing it” method for the underarm join just didn’t cut it. So I’ve ripped back, and am going for a do-ever. Thankfully I was only about 4 rows into the shoulders when I made the decision. So it doesn’t hurt too bad.

Last time I didn’t realize my mistake until it was too late to rip back- and I had to improvise.

Now, I’m a fairly creative improviser, but I had to undertake extraordinary measures to fix the last EZ seamless saddle shoulder project I attempted. In that case, I had “fudged” the shoulder width a bit. That resulted in the sleeves sitting out too far, and being impossibly wide because they were not properly inset.

I had already cut the steeked neckline before I realized my error, so at that point, to make it wearable by a normally proportioned human, it was either

1. unravel and discard the handspun yarn back to before I started decreasing for the Vneck (!!!) or

2. figure out a way to make a dart in the arm after I’d already gotten to the saddles for the shoulders.

Guess which I did.

Yep. I figured out how many total stiches I needed to remove from the sleeves by the time I got to the shoulders, then I dropped back stitches until much of the upper arms was a mess of crinkly un-knitted yarn, and re knitted only as many stitches in each row as I needed per the rescue plan. ( I should have kept better notes on this process, or documented with photos, but at the time, I was a bit distressed and just wanted to put it behind me.)

Then I gathered up the extra yarn from each row that was no longer taken up with stitches and collected it along the inside centerline of the sleeve, making sure the recreated stitches were all even in tension and such.

Then, I cut each yarn in the center (except maybe the first one or two, which were really quite short) and wove the ends into the neighboring stitches.

Yes. Wove them in.

I don’t even remember how many ends. Too many to count. Both directions. Each row.

So, now the upper sleeves on this sweater are Seriously Reinforced. And the sweater is wearable. Not perfect, but wearable. Which is good, because I spun a whole little border leicester fleece to make it.

It was a painful victory.

And I think I learned my lesson.

I ripped back, didn’t I?