FO-deep breath sweater

I've been sitting on this entry for a few days. I'm hovering on the edge of exhaustion again. It's because of the gym, I know. I should really figure out something else, some other time to go besides 6am, but I do like going. It makes me feel like I'm doing something good for myself. However, by the time I get home from work, make dinner and finish eating it, I'm so run down that I have no energy to do anything. Now it is 8:30 and I'm wondering how much longer my eyes are going to stay open. The worst is when the alarm goes off in the morning, and I lay there, thinking of ways I can rationalize staying in bed, and knowing I'll just be wracked with guilt and feel like a total failure if I do, so it's not even worth it to skip the gym.

So that's why it's taken a while for me to post my latest FO, the Deep Breath Sweater.



Pattern: Deep Breath Sweater (rav link) by Kirsten Hipsky for WEBS, which is where I got the pattern. The good thing is that the pattern can be done with regular yarn too. You just add a ribbed band rather than the plain garter stitch band of the lace-weight one.

Yarn: Valley Yarns 2/14 Alpaca Silk OMG this is such a bargain! It comes on cones, and one cone is $22.50, and enough yarn to probably do two of these sweaters. I seriously have at least half the cone left. I think I'm going to use it to make a lace scarf, but not until much later. I'm a little burned out on the color. Ha, get it? BURNED OUT. Since this is still a Project Spectrum FIRE project for me. Heh. ANYWAY, this yarn is really strong, yet still soft, and not too bad to knit with. I liked it better than the kidsilk haze, which is a bit fuzzier, and less fun to knit with, but the effect is similar, if a bit less fuzzy, which in my opinion is a good thing.



Needles: I used the recommended size 8s. I had to purchase a 16" size 8 for the sleeves. The neck started out on a 24" and then moved onto a 36" needle when the 24" wasn't long enough for me to see what I was doing. It was a lot of stockinette in the round, but I knit most of it while I was sitting in the airport waiting for the JetBlue flight down to Florida. I'll have to talk about that later though.



Notes: The only thing I found slightly tricky about this pattern was the bind-off. The first time I tried it, it was too tight. I finally ended up going up to a size 10 for the binding off, and that worked really well. But when I got to the bottom edge, I must have been really tired, because I started working the garter cuff with the size 10 needles, rather than just using them to bind off, so the bottom band is knit in the bigger size, but it just prevents it from being too tight at all, so it worked out ok. I also added a couple of inches in length. As we said at knitting the other night, knit until you think it's going to be too long, and then it's probably right. I even took it off the needles to try it on, which really helped me see that I did need a bit more length. And I'm really happy with it! I can't wait until it gets cold enough to wear it!!!