Snow White

... is finished! Yay for the first sweater of 2011! Knitting endless rounds of 2x2 ribbing may not have been the most exciting thing, but things got much more interesting once I got to the raglan decreases - I've never seen a sweater knit quite like this, with either sides of the shoulder worked separately and then joined via kitchener stitch, but I love the shrug-like quality of the neck and the general flattering-ness of the pattern! The 2x2 decreases in the front give a nice illusion of curves I don't actually have. Yay.

As an added bonus, it covers the small tattoo at the base of my neck, which means I can wear it to work in tattoo-phobic Japan! 

Other thoughts on:

The Pattern: Snow White by Ysolda Teague. This pattern has a unique construction that made the last few hours of knitting quite interesting. As many other people on Ravelry observed, just follow the instructions and everything will make sense. I didn't make any modifications other than making the sleeves shorter by exactly one round (they are quite long), and I also rather lazily bound off the neck stitches in a regular bind-off, to no apparent disadvantage. Though I can be a bit of a sloppy knitter, I think the directions are thorough and the pattern is forgiving enough that it looks quite finished. The only thing I wasn't able to totally pull off successfully was the tubular cast on, which - while stretchy - felt rather tight, and pulls the flared sleeves inwards a bit, though not overly noticeably. I'm guessing I must have done something wrong? In any case, you barely notice when it's on, it's just a bit tight when you pull it over your head.

The Yarn: Noro Cash Iroha in dark teal, 8.5 skeins. This single-ply yarn is so soft and almost pearlescent; I fell in love with the color over a year ago when I saw an unwound skein of it hanging from the wall in a Berkeley yarn shop, so I'm happy I finally made something with it. I haven't blocked this yet, so I can't say anything yet about the performance over time (though if the Thisbe hat I made for my sister is any indication, it'll just soften up more?). My only complaint is that virtually every ball had a knot in it, which means I had to weave in twice as many ends :-(

Raveled here.

fingers crossed...

Having vowed to get seven sweaters done this year, I figured I should start by doing one that's been in my queue for ages now: Snow White. I bought the yarn for this in April last year but have been quite embarrassingly put off by the tubular cast on. It makes no sense: I love knitting, and so should be happy to do anything knitting related ... except for the provisional cast on required to start a tubular cast on, apparently. I really don't know why it took me so long, because once I got started, the tubular cast on wasn't that bad at all. Only then I took one look at the extremely skinny tube I was knitting, and realized there was no way in hell it would ever fit around my waist, stretchy cast on or no. So I got to do it all over again, one size up. It really does go faster the second time around.

So that's the progress on Snow White so far ...Still a bit small, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed it will fit in the end. And yes, I am photographing the project on our tiny little bookshelf because the rest of the house is just too damn messy to be anywhere near a camera. Sad, but true.