A tale of two squares.

Amidst all of the gift and tosell crafting that I've been doing lately I had quite the itch to start something new and probably big for myself as well. And at the top of the list of the projects I could tackle sat a sweater.

Over the past few months I have actually accumulated a few different "sweater quantities" of yarn. Most of them however are big thick yarns. Yarns like those are quite excellent for making sweaters that knit up quickly and are super amazing comfy. But they are also super warm. And while I could still probably wear such things year round sometimes I pretend to be a normal human and dress appropriately.

That left me with some awesome hand-dyed blue alpaca. The yarn was given to me when I was still working at the symphony. One of the violists is also a knitter and apparently she had dyed up this yarn by request but the recipient wasn't happy with the colors. No matter the reasoning I pretty much found this to be the most amazing generous thing ever. She actually gave me two different batches of yarn the first was a dusty purple and I've made a sweater and shawl from it. But I hadn't touched the brighter blue.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="170"] Previously knit sweater[/caption]

I considered a few different sweater patterns but have decided upon a pattern I've knit up before:http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/featherweight-cardigan. It's a great pattern because its simple yet beautiful and will definitely show off the yarn and hopefully be able to be worn quite a bit. As much as I love the first cardi I knit however I did want to make some adjustments.

The last Featherweight that I knit fits, but only just barely. The main problem seems to be in the shoulders/arms. I'm not entirely sure what went wrong but I have some suspicions. The knitting was done a few years back and I suspect I did as I often do and just knit the smallest size. This time I took out a store bought sweater that I think fits quite well and measured it. Then I matched those measurements to the pattern size 2. Additionally over the past few years one of the things I have learned is the importance of gauge. I have often been guilty of fudging things quite a bit but I'm now pretty adamant about knitting, washing and blocking, and THEN finally measuring and determining gauge.

And that brings me to where I stand now:



#3 is on the needles now....