I Never Promised You an Organic Garden

Very Exciting News: I have finished my first hand knitted wool sweater.  I started this in February, and I just finished sewing up the sleeves at 9:30pm this evening.  I still need to take the time to block it, but it is totally wearable at this moment.  For all you non-knitters, blocking is dousing a completed project in water and pinning it out into the final shape you want.  This helps to work out uneven stitches, ensure proper length and width, and generally improves the final look of your project.

Overall, I am very happy with how the sweater turned out and will wear it with pride.  The body is a little longer than I intended but still stylish, and the sleeves are a little shorter than I expected but can be corrected with blocking.  For those of you who knit or know this sort of information about clothing,  the sweater is a raglan style (something to do with the shoulder seems) and was knitted from the top down, which allowed me to knit the sweater in the round and not have to sew all the sections together at the end.  There really is no better way to make a sweater in my opinion. Who wants to sew pieces together?

When I began the class at Unwind Yarn Shop, I thought there was no way I would ever finish a wearable sweater, but I have really surprised myself. While it did take me seven months to complete the project, I did not spend all that time working on the sweater. I put it down this summer to work on other projects. All in all it is very empowering to complete such a big complex project and feel good about the result.  Of course, at least part of the credit goes to Vicki and Julie from Unwind for answering my seemingly never-ending questions and being great teachers.

I think I will definitely be knitting another sweater someday in the future!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 at 10:48 pm and is filed under Announcement, Happy Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.