The big news, as seen above: I finished my Weasley sweater, a mere five months since I got the yarn. The bigger news: it almost sorta kinda fits, unlike the sweater of shame. The sleeves on this one are a bit wide, as I feared, and a touch long, which I am cleverly disguising above by waving my hands in the air to express my surprise that the sweater is done, but they’re not ridiculous. (I am somewhat chagrined to admit that the piece of clothing I am wearing on my bottom half in this picture is a Multiples skirt that no longer goes out in public.)

I got to do a lot of new things since my sleeves in progress update. I pressed the pieces with a damp cloth to uncurl the edges of the pieces before assembly. That step went fine, but I was surprised to find two loops along one edge that shouldn’t have been there. Oops. Seaming the shoulders was a bit more of a challenge. I tried backstitching but wasn’t happy with the result–too stiff and obvious. So then I turned to Knitting in Plain English which had a diagram of exactly what I was doing (joining stitches bound off in stairsteps to same). I tried to follow it, and the seam did come out better, but I still don’t think it looks like it should. When I redid the backstitched side, I failed to pay attention to how things lined up and ended up having to redo it again. Bah.

Adding the collar meant picking up stitches, for which I used the pictures in Vogue Knitting as a reference. I did just like it showed, measuring the space and putting yarn markers at even intervals and making sure I added the same number of stitches evenly between each marker. Except I think I messed up somewhere because there’s this ridge where I don’t think there should be one. Eh, that’s okay; I did manage to end up with a reasonable looking collar.

Then it was time to sew the sleeves to the body, which was a new kind of seaming (rows to stitches). That went better than the shoulders, whether because it’s actually easier or because I had done something similar by now I don’t know. Then all I had to do was sew up the bottoms of the sleeves and the sides of the body (reversing the seam where the bottom rolls up, of course). Of all the seams, I liked how these came out the best–very neat and flat and almost invisible.

So now I have a sweater. Yay for finishing. I have some yarn left over; the pattern called for 13 skeins of the main color, and I only used about 11. I also have plenty of the contrast color left, since I have a vision of future multi-colored sweater made from Felted Tweed and since there aren’t that many light colors in the current shades I bought the Corn whenever I saw it. (So if you’re making your own Weasley and want a letter this color, just let me know and I’ll send you a length.) Before I tackle a many-colored sweater I plan to try a many-colored hat, but before that I’m going to make the hat I promised Mr. Karen last winter. And somehow I got some sock yarn in my stash, so I want to try working with that, and there are still those mittens with the red print yarn and so on and so on. And all the quilts I want to make. Why oh why does work have to take up so much of my time?