Please Let This Work!

I have finished my sweater!

Well, sort of. It's in the back room drying right now and I do have to weave end the ends. Normally I do that before blocking, but I have this fear that the sweater will lengthen after blocking, making the sleeves too long. If that's the case, I'll have to rip back and reknit them to the proper length. I could just be looking for trouble with that thought, though. Mostly because this sweater turned out not the be the super easy project I anticipated.

Part of that less-than-super-easy bit was the pattern itself. The arm started way high. If I had followed the pattern as written, I would have made an article of clothing that would double as a way to slowly saw my arms away from my body. So there was some adaptation-related math there (which I was hoping to avoid after my last math-heavy adapted sweater). Then, it ended up too short, too. It just looked... frumpy. So I needed to lengthen the sweater and also wanted make the sleeves full-length. (I love my first sweater and wear it quite often but sometimes my wrists get cold.)

Anyway, the desire for a longer length meant my yarn was going to run tight. Which was where most of the stress from this sweater came from. I've spent the last two days thinking, "I hope I have enough yarn. Please let me have enough yarn" with every stitch. Because of this, I ended up doing the sleeves, ripping them back some (too short), adding length to the back, doing most of the sleeves except the border, doing the collar, then going back to the sleeves. I even ended up having to weigh my yarn at the end to see if I could get all ten rounds of the border in for the sleeves (I couldn't. I got nine.) But I got it all done and yes, I had enough yarn.

Barely.

Yes, that little squish of yarn is all of the leftover I have from my seven skeins. It's about a yard and a half - just enough to use to sew some buttons on (once I get them in the mail). Notice that it is all crinkly? Yeah, I had to rip out my gauge swatch to finish up the sleeves!

But everything seems to have worked! And I must say, the yarn is lovely. It's Plymouth Yarn Royal Llama Silk - a 60% llama 40% silk blend and it feels so soft and cuddly! It's really warm, too - this is totally a winter sweater. But I loved knitting with the yarn. Hopefully I'll enjoy wearing the sweater just as much!