The First Sweater, Finally

I finally-completely- finished my first sweater a couple of weeks ago. It had been done (although I still considered ripping it one more time and reknitting to use up every last bit of yarn) but I hadn't woven in the ends or picked out a button for it. Finally got it together, took a single picture, and put it up on my shelf. I only got around to really sharing it this week!

I wrote about it before, here: Getting There, a previous blog post.. from this time last year. Yeah, it's been a long sweater in the making, and it's one of the projects that got put on hold during the move from Philly to LV.

Well, last week there were thunderstorms and lots of rain in Vegas (I heard a thunderstorm and tornado warning on the radio for the first time! They even warned of hail! It was pretty jarring for the station to have this ominous staticky voice, then go back to playing "Tequila"), and it cooled everything down. It was ... 73 degrees!! Haha I'm so used to 100+ weather that 73 felt cold.
A friend of mine from Scotland told me she's dreaming of 73 degrees.. it was 48 for her.

My first sweater! 

The button is a trio of fake pearls. I just noticed there seems to be some pulling at the underarm- you can see all the stitches skew to my arm. I don't know what causes that, but it isn't noticeable to me while I'm wearing the sweater, so I guess it's all right.

I'm really excited to be done with it. Although it's always pretty warm for wool in Las Vegas, it cools down enough for me to wear it occasionally. The valley gets cold at night.

Now on to other projects. My current queue:

1. Things I have started or have the yarn for:
            1. My Like-Like Sweater
            2. The vest for my mom, which I may rip out and start over (to make it in one piece instead of panels. I started with a chevron pattern but I think I'm going to make plain stockinette now. Maybe I'll make a border for the front and bottom hem with a different yarn.
           3. The scarf for my boss. I don't like the yarn that I ordered for it, but I do have one skein of yarn that might work if it's enough yardage.
           4. My Wingspan shawl. So close to being done with this.. I've gotten to the inner skein where the yarn is kind of folded up and wavy.
           5. Technically I have yarn in stash I could use for a Calorimetry for my aunt but I need to ask her if she still wants one!

2. Things on the queue, not started yet (not even yarn ordered):
          1. Charlie Brown Sweater dress. My idea is a yellow sweater dress with the trademark zig-zag. It'll be in worsted or sport weight yarn so it'll take a while, and I'm not sure how to do the zig zag. I'll probably cheat and do duplicate stitch, but I want to challenge myself with color work (after all, it's only two colors! but there will be long floats...)
          2. A Tardis shawl for Jenn- Knitty's Bigger on the Inside. I haven't done a lace project in ages. Alex also wants a Dalek hat, which I'll have to reverse engineer as there's no available pattern for what he wants.


Phew! That's quite a list. And considering I just picked up and finished a little fingerless mitts project as a "break" from my other projects, I don't have a great timeline for this list. I would like to enter something in the Clark County fair in April, so I've got six and a half months!