Obsessed

I got pretty obsessed with those two sweaters this past week, and maybe that was a good thing. A good thing because our weather was uniformly gloomy: low, even glowering, overcast skies, rain light, medium and heavy, a leak in the roof, water coming into the basement, no chance for an invigorating walk with my friend M. We daren't complain though, thinking of those who lost their homes to floods here there and everywhere, to fire in Slave Lake, Alberta, and to tornadoes in many states, especially in Joplin, Missouri, which was so devastated.

After that first sweater was knit I began to doubt the colour combination; it's way out of my usual range. I thought maybe just the three colours in smaller stripes?---so I knit up a small sample that way, laid it beside the sweater and thought there was no comparison. The four colour combination has it beat by miles. Well, that's good, I don't have to unravel what's already been knitted.

So I immediately cast on the ribbing for the

younger granddaughter. I had thought that would be the first sweater, already made, but that turned out bigger than I had planned. This second sweater has fewer stitches, and each stripe is 11 rows, instead of 12 rows. The finished bottom ribbing is hung on the machine, and the sweater knit up from there.

I also unraveled the two sleeves already finished, because handknitting is just not as smooth and even as machine knitting, and the sleeves wouldn't look well in the finished sweater.

When this second sweater came off the machine I started on the front bands and the neck ribbing. Using straight needles I picked up (with a crochet hook) 74 stitches along each front. Around the neck I put the 66 stitches on a circular needle. Then I can knit the front and neck ribbings continuously. It took only 8 rows to finish.

The buttonholes didn't turn out super good. I cheerfully did the yarn overs to make the holes for the buttons, but forgot to do the knit two together at the same time. So I had to do the k2 tog retroactively on a later row, and they're not perfect. I considered ripping back to them, but at over 200 stitches a row, I thought I'd let them go. I'll try making them look a little more uniform by doing a buttonhole stitch around them with a light bit of yarn.

I have some darling heart buttons in exactly these colours that would look great on this sweater, but have only one set, not enough for two sweaters, so I'll hang on with that for a while and see what I can find.

Now I have to hang those sleeve ribbings and get the sleeves knitted and sewn in. But I'm well on time with this project, so far.