FO: Hild is done!

Pattern: Hild, from Elsebeth Lavold's Second Viking Knits Collection. In the end, I customized it, so be warned: if you knit it from the pattern you won't get the waist shaping or the wrist motifs.

Since it is my first sweater, I had to take bunches of "FO" pictures:



And here are some closeups just for the knitting blog.

The arm seaming was a bit dicey; I think the sleeve I knit first is also the sleeve I seamed first, so one side is way more beginnerish than the other. This is the one that came out more as I meant it to, though if I had it to do again I'd devote more stitches to the edging / central rib. And I probably wouldn't slip the edge stitches either; I didn't see until too late how that would limit my options with the actual seaming.



And here's how I brought the cables up into the neckline on the front, giving the stitches a few rows to migrate into the 2x2 design. I like the final effect and would definitely do it again... less nervously next time. :)



I've cast on for the next thing, the Chinese Lace Pullover in shiny red bamboo. It's going to be a very, very different project. Lea is knitting it too, so maybe there will be more multi-author action on this blog in the next little bit. :)

Things come together; the center can hold

An exciting weekend for Hild!

Yesterday I split the front piece for the neck, and obsessively stayed up late finishing the front; between the cable pattern, shaping on the neck edges, shaping on the outer edges, and dealing with two balls of yarn, I was afraid that if I stopped I'd never get back into the right head-space.

I used Grumperina's stretchy bind-off on the front of the neck, fearing that a regular one would leave the neck too tight to fit over my head. I don't know if that really would have been a problem, but this neck-hole fits over my head easily, so I'm going to call it a success.

And to seam the shoulders I used a crochet slip stitch... I had already not left all my stitches live for the 3-needle bindoff, and as the Yarn Harlot taught me, crochet creates a nice stable line. Yay for hooking!

Of course I had to immediately pick up stitches for the neck (I did that mostly with a crochet hook too). And then I had to knit just one row to get the stitches back OFF the stupid DPNs, which didn't work well with the yarn at all, and onto circs. I may have to do one more row yet tonight... some challenges still remain, as I'm carrying some cablework into the neck stitches just enough to get gracefully from the stitches as they were to an even 2x2 pattern. Need to get to the mindless part by Tuesday so that I can work on the neck in lecture! What is it on? Oh yes, NP completeness... I won't want to be cabling through that.

Happy Hild says:



"I'm starting to feel like a real sweater!"

In the meantime these Francie socks make me grudgingly admit I might make socks again someday.