Done! Finally done!

Of the three sweaters that were on my needles, this is the one that I started most recently. The knowledge of those older sweaters, however, shall not dampen my sense of triumph over finally finishing! Sam's! Cobblestone!

I love this sweater. More importantly, Sam loves this sweater. It's pilling a little already, from him wearing it. Can pilling make me happy? Yes it can.

The details:

pattern: Cobblestone by Jared Flood (aka brooklyn tweed)

yarn: Di.Ve Zenith, 7 skeins

needles: US size 7 Knitpicks

mods: Quite a few. I used my gauge, Sam's measurements, and my mad math skillz to size it for him. I also (obviously) made it a "zip-up," as he requested. I omitted the short-rows, because Sam is a stick person and I was running out of yarn. Actually, I did run out of yarn. That's why there's the gray striping in the shoulders. When it became obvious that I wasn't going to make it, I looked for more yarn, but it was a Webs closeout so no dice. I had some of the same yarn in a light chartreuse so I overdyed it with black and used that. It didn't come out black, but I did two-row stripes with the dyed yarn and the last skein of the black and it came out pretty cool. Gotta love knitting's potential for flexibility and ingenuity.

The zipper was not nearly as scary as I thought it would be.

I have issues with sewing in a straight line on the machine, so I decided to hand-sew the zipper in, using backstitch. I also decided to use embroidery floss, for extra strength and because, well, I have a lot of it. The black floss matched the sweater really well; on the front of the sweater, you can't see the stitches at all.


It was actually impossible to see the stitches even as I was sewing in the zipper, so they meander a little. Ah well.

The last details Sam wanted were these holes for his thumbs:

I don't know that I really see the appeal, but he's been known to, um, add these holes to his other shirts. And I didn't want to have to harm him in some fit of knitterly rage (kidding! Just kidding!).

I'm so happy with how this turned out. And I have cast on Reese's sweater already - a top-down raglan in the same yarn in green. It will also be really boring knitting (damn these kids and their plain-sweater tastes), but hopefully it won't take me five months like Sam's did. Yikes.

Oh, and there are more pictures on Ravelry!