I finished a sweater for myself over my holiday break and I still had time to start a new sweater for Hubs. So, I spent a few hours on 12/30/23 to review the pattern Hubs wanted and to wind eight (8) balls of yarn. On: 12/31/23: using my Chiaogoo 4.0mm (US6) needles, I casted on an XL size since there's a 26cm positive ease in this sweater. I was able to complete the back yoke and started on the chart (through row 4) for the armhole increases.
01/01/24: I finished halfway through row 7 of the armhole increase chart only to realize that the pattern wasn't matching up to the chart.
01/02/24: I decided to take a break from it only to realize later that day that I was reading the chart as if in the round, not back and forth!😖😵💫🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️ So, I had to rip back to row 2 to start over and get back on track. Finally finished the first round of the chart (through row 8).
01/03/24: finished the 2nd round of the chart (rows 1 - 8 again) and the rest of the chart! The back yoke is done! 🥳🎉🎊🙌 Here's what it looks like:
Now, onto the left shoulder.😳😵💫
01/04/24: picked up stitches needed for the left shoulder and finished it!🥳🎉🎊🙌 Now that I have a better idea of what I'm supposed to do, it went quicker than I thought I'd take. Here's what it looks like:
Now onto the right shoulder! I was able to finish that as well and join to create the front yoke (row 1) all on the same day!🥳🎉🎊🙌
01/05/24: completed rows 2-16 of the front yoke.01/06/24: finished the remaining chart for the front yoke and join to the back to start the body (through row 10 of the first repeat):
01/07/24: continued to work on the body (finished the repeats for rows 7-10 and got through 4 repeats of rows 17-18):
01/08/24: continued to work on the body (finished 1 repeat for row 17-18).
01/09/24: continued to work on the body (finished the remaining repeats for row 17-18 and through row 24):
01/10/24: continued to work on the body (finished row 25-32):
01/11/24: continued to work on the body (finished the second repeat through row 35):01/12/24: continued to work on the body (finished through row 46).
01/13/24: continued to work on the body (finished the remainder of chart for the body, through row 54, repeated rows 1-10):
01/14/24: finally finished the body!!🥳🎉🎊🙌 (finished the rest of row 12-16, 15 1x1 rows, the double knit rows and bound off):
The body (from the mid center back before the ribbing) measured 56.5cm long. And, I changed the bind off from an Italian bind off to an Icelandic bind off as I didn't want to do a sewn bind off. Personally, I think it doesn't matter as it looks nearly the same; it's a matter of preference on how one likes to bind off. 01/15/24: picked up stitches for the right sleeve.
01/16/24: picked up stithes for the left sleeve & completed row 1- 5 on both sides.
01/17/24: I decided that I would complete the neck before I finished off the sleeves since I saw an Instagram post that said you should always finish the neck before your sleeves as it affects the length of your sleeves. So I picked up the required number of stitches and followed the instructions. Completed through row 9.
01/18/24: finished off the neck edge and continued to work on the sleeves (finished through row 9 (1st repeat) on both sides):
01/20/24: continued to work on the sleeves (finished through row 25 on both sides)
01/22/24: continued to work on the sleeves (finished through row 40 on both sides):
01/23/24: continued to work on the sleeves (finished through row 61 on both sides) 01/24/24: continued to work on the sleeves (finished through row 75, including all the repeats on both sides)
01/25/24: finished sleeves by repeating rows 1-3 as well as 12-15? rows of 1x1 ribbing, 2 double knitting rows and doing an Icelandic bind off. And here's what it looks like on Hubs:
Wow! 😳 I can't believe that I was able to finish it in 24 days!🥳🙌🎉🎊 It helped that this sweater had clear "blocks" of patterns so it gave me "goals" to reach. While I wasn't initially thrilled that this wasn't a full knit in the round sweater (although it eventually became a knit in the round), as I continued to knit, it became more apparent why it's constructed like this and I saw how useful it is for shaping (even though this sweater has a lot of positive ease!). 😖😶👍 I learned a lot from this sweater project and Hubs is really happy with his new sweater. 👍😍🥰💕 Now, all we need is to have an extremely cold day or we need to go on travel to somewhere pretty cold for him to wear it!😉🤭😁
(It was a cold day. ☃️❄️)
