Recently in Shannon's Sweater Category

I'm feeling indecisive about what I should write about today. I think it's time that I showed you an FO:

Simply put, I love this sweater! I love its simple looks, the soft yarn, and the warm turtleneck. Expect to see another one of these on my needles within the year.

The details:

Pattern: Shannon's Very Necessary Sweater (it's a free pattern, people!)

Yarn: Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran in the Casket colorway, 134 (weird name, I know.) I used about 13 balls.

Needles: US9s for the ribbing, US8s for the body.

What I changed: Not much! I substituted yarns, but between needing a slightly longer sweater and getting a slightly bigger row gauge than Shannon's, I mostly knit the pattern as written. Leave it to Shannon to provide me with the pattern to do that.

What I would change next time: Not much! I'll use a different yarn next time (for variety's sake), and I'm going to knit this sweater in the round. I think that I would knit the turtleneck slightly longer, too (in fact, I plan to add a few inches to this one. Eight inches isn't enough for the turtleneck to comfortably fold over itself.

I'm off to see the Harlot--and maybe the knitting lab at FIT (if JetBlue is feeling cooperative, today).

I know what you're all beginning to think. Didn't Colleen have a lot of projects in the works?

She does! And one by one they're all coming to completion. I think that FO posts will need to wait until next week

Shannon's Very Necessary Sweater is quickly drawing to a conclusion. Only an inch or two more left on the turtleneck. I'll compare its length to another turtleneck to see if I'm anywhere near a realistic bind-off point.

Did you read the weather forecast for Boston tomorrow? It's starting off warm, and finishing with rain. Yuck-o! I'm thinking that this sweater will be perfect in place of a jacket tomorrow morning, and I can easily supplement it with a light coat tomorrow evening.

Apparently I confused quite a few of you with my explanation of my placement of the raglan seam. Let me try something different.

The outermost rows of the raglan and upper sweater body are K, P (i.e. one row knit, next row purl). Originally I placed the seam in the outer rows, the knit rows of the body and arm edges. Because my outermost row of stitches is always uneven, this resulted in a very uneven seam as two uneven rows came together.

You can see the difference in this side-by-side photo. The first attempt is on the left. When I redid the seam, I placed it one row in (one row back, or one row behind, in the purl row. Thus, the knit rows of both pieces are hidden within the seam, resulting in a kind of "blank" raglan, or a raglan without that row (or rows) of knit stitches marching up the middle.

Hope this clears thing up.

Shannon's sweater doesn't have wonky raglan lines like mine:

(This photo is Shannon's, but saved to my server.)

Shannon's raglans are all purl stitches, meaning that she seamed behind the knit stitches. It looks much, much better.

Okay, kids, to the frog pond we go.

Subway frogging. If you think knitting attracts stares, you should see what unknitting does.

I'll admit to you all that my finishing on the Very Necessary Sweater isn't my best work. I don't know what's happening. Maybe it's the slightly nubbly Jo Sharp Silkroad Aran? Maybe it's that I'm seaming too close to the edge (poor planning meant that I didn't build in another selvage stitch (I usually like to have my seams placed between the first and second rows).

My raglan lines are especially uneven.

I don't know what to do about this. It's a result of the uneven edge stitches. I'm hoping that one will be so dazzled by the entire sweater that the slightly (okay, very) wonky raglan lines won't be noticed.

While seaming, I realized that the next time that I knit this sweater, I'm doing it in the round. Knitting it in pieces meant that I had a very portable project throughout the knitting phase, but for a sweater this nice, I think that it'll be worth the sacrifice of toting around a giant knitting bag on the train.

Meanwhile, my knitting challenges aside, put your hands together for fellow Knitsmith Gabriella whose Clessidra knee socks are in the latest edition of Knitty. Way to go Gabriella! Love it when a fellow Knitsmith does good!