Greenbell

Finished! Washed and blocked too. My green Boatneck Bluebell Sweater from Fitted Knits is done. Here I am posing for my usual side profile shot. It looks better this way. After many starts and stops, I finally reached the end on Tuesday. What a relief. Last weekend, I thought I had this pattern beat; I was busy tweaking the sleeve pattern for a closer fit. I ended up going overboard that it wouldn't go around my forearms. So I had to rip it back AGAIN! This time, I followed the written directions but omitted the bell sleeve bit. Just knit straight until the wrist. Also, I only knit one "ring" at the wrist, instead of doing another ring triad. Having another bulky triad so soon after the ones at the elbow would've made my arms look short. I wanted to elongate the sleeves as much as possible.

For the body, I also omitted the ring triad at the bottom edge. Instead, I did a few rows of garter stitch and then bound off. With my body, I didn't think another set of bulky rings would look good around my hips, so I made it lay flat. One thing to note: the model in the book must have a super long torso. If I had not fitted the pattern to me, the sweater would've ended up mid-thigh!

In the end, was it worth it? Four frogs and some frustration. Well, yes, it all worked out eventually. If I hadn't altered anything, I would've spent a lot of time on an ill-fitting sweater that I'd never wear. So glad I made the boatneck neckline smaller. It's the width that I'm comfortable with right now; but the original cast-on would've made this totally off the shoulder. I cast-on 90 stitches (20 inches). I knit the chest to 34 inches, instead of 33 inches, because I thought the raglan sleeve-body separation was going to stretch too much if I made it smaller. Now I know it would've been safe to go with 33 inches but a little ease is ok.

Vitals: 4 skeins of Cascade 220 Heathers in sage green on size 8 (5mm) needles

Gauge: 4.5 stitches/inch; normally I have a 5st/inch on size 7s (4.5mm) with this yarn but I didn't want to recalculate the pattern, so I decided to go with the pattern gauge. It's a little stretchy but hopefully it'll keep it's shape.

My sweater pictures look out of focus. Somehow the sharp picture on Flickr is not translating here. If you click on the picture, it should take you to my Flickr album. Or check it out on Ravelry.