a confession and a body

The keen eyed of you might have noticed that the cowl neck sweater in my last post is suspiciously the same color of the Salina sweater that I was working on. I admit it - I am a yarn cannibal. After finishing Salina and seaming, I tried it on and was horrified by the fit. I think my mistake is that I followed Rowan's suggested fit size, instead of looking at the measurements and choosing what I ordinarily would. The seed stitch border, which looked so pretty flat, also fell at a rather inconvenient place on my stomach and added about 10 pounds. I am still going to be knitting some patterns out of Vintage Knits, but will probably not be trying Salina again, and will be more aware of what size I am actually knitting. I'll probably also convert the sweaters into circular knitting. I just hate the way seams feel in a handknit sweater!

In more happy knitting news, my cardigan from Poetry in Stitches is trucking along nicely. I've finished the body up to the armholes, and also finished the two fronts. Now I'm knitting the back up to be the same length as the fronts. I have about two pattern repeats to go. The pattern calls to knit back and forth on the three pieces - or, in other words, to purl while stranding. I finally caved in and taught myself the Norwegian purl method (also found in Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Without Tears), which has made it a little easier.

Whenever I get frustrated with it, I just look at the fronts of the sweater and admire my "spiked" edge.

Yes, that's right - spikes. On my sweater. How cool is that?!