for now, that's good enough for me

Here's the finished version of that sweater from a few weeks ago. I still have a ways to go in making my floats actually float, but I'm enjoying this nonetheless. It's the Paper Dolls pattern, with the yoke pattern borrowed from Spilly Jane's quo vadis mittens.

While I quite love many of Kate Davies' designs (all that beautiful colorwork!) (and lovelies without colorwork!), I hadn't thought much about this particular design until I saw her blog post about all the different custom yokes. (Go read it! But only if you want to find yourself slightly obsessed with the idea of knitting a paper dolls, too.) Two particularly caught my attention: a beautiful adaptation of a mitten pattern to sweater size; and one featuring an animal that has always been dear to my heart. (Respectively, on Ravelry, those are andiknit's Paper Flowers Pullover and jettshin's Paper Dolls-Hedgehog Version.)

I wanted something a little more subdued for my first attempt, so I had my mind set on replicating the Paper Flowers Pullover. However, the Plucky Knitter just kept sending classics that I liked with my background color. And I couldn't quite picture how to adapt that pattern to be multi-colored.
Luckily, knitting the body of the sweater gave me a long time to dither about yoke options. I finally decided to go with the quo vadis pattern as I was packing for a week's vacation and needed to print out *some* pattern to work from. The quo vadis pattern led to some interesting decreases during the yoke, since it does not have large sections of background color to hide the decreases. Nonetheless, I'm quite happy about the end result and think it is very wearable.

All the yarn used is the Plucky Knitter Primo Fingering, in Hoity Toity (main color), Memories (the purple), Backwards and in High Heels (the teal), and Sterling. (All but Sterling were Plucky Classics.) I could have finished this sweater with just two skeins of Hoity Toity, but I wanted to make it longer than the pattern suggested. So, about 3/4 of the way through the body, I purchased an extra skein through an ISO on Ravelry. The new skein was much more rust-colored than the skeins I already had, but I alternated skeins, so I don't think that you can tell the difference.
However, I neglected to do so during the short row shaping at the back neck, so it turned out much more rust-colored than the rest of the sweater, as you can sort-of see in the picture of the back. (To my credit, it's harder to alternate skeins when you're doing short rows because you never get back to your other skein. However, if I had thought it through, I would have used one of the other skeins for the short row section.)

One note about the primo: it's a dream to knit with but blocks out very large! I have found that I need to put this sweater into the dryer to get it back to normal size, but it also fuzzes in the dryer. I've defuzzed most of the sweater, but it is definitely something that I'll plan for in any future primo sweaters.

Given how much I enjoyed knitting this sweater, and how I look forward to wearing it this fall, I expect that there's another one with hedgehogs not too far in my future.

at least it's too warm now anyway

After sharpening my seaming skills, I decided I wanted to finish this sweater before it was too warm to wear. The pattern is the Swirled Pentagon Pullover from Knitting Nature (same book as the droplets; many of its patterns are on my "to knit" list.) It's knit in Rowan Pure Wool Aran, a Christmas gift (which also included my mom allowing me to drag her around a lovely yarn store calculating yardage requirements and debating over colors for days on end).

Great pattern, great yarn, great. Right? I'd even thought that superwash wool was a big plus. In fact, it might have been, had I tried washing my swatch before starting. But, honestly, that seemed like a useless step. I'd knit the swatch. I'd gotten gauge. What else could the yarn want from me? Turns out that superwash wool grows by about a third after washing. So blocking left me with a sweater that had a ridiculously floppy collar and was about 7 inches too long and much, much too wide. (It's a pity I didn't have a working camera during this process. Although, I guess you all don't really need pictures of me crying over a lot of blue-green yarn.)

Luckily, Ravelry saved the day, by letting me know that this was totally normal and all I had to do was put the sweater into the dryer and check it every five minutes until it was back to size. (This is why everyone needs to sign up for Ravelry!) And, luckily, my laundry room has open outlets so I could bring my computer and work. This did get me a few choice comments, including one that suggested that the laundry room must be a great place to steal my neighbors' wireless. And it almost completely worked: I'm perfectly happy with the length and if the arms are a little too long, it will just encourage me to stretch.

But, you see, what that picture above doesn't show is the amount of fabric that's pinned behind my back. As Keren has pointed out, this is an important piece of information. So there it is: about 6 inches of extra width. It's not that big of a deal except when I sit down and then the fabric balloons all over the place and looks totally goofy.

Having knit other sweaters too large, I know my options: frog, seam or block? Clearly, blocking is not the way to go. And frogging seems like a darn shame. I think I have a seaming plan that will work, but I may also decide that I just won't sit down on the days I wear this sweater. Since spring is slowly coming to town, this seems like a plan that might work for the next six months or so.