It’s a cold, snowy winter this season so I decided our rubber chicken needed a scarf of his own.

A close up of the scarf, knit from my stash:

Now the chicken can be warm when he goes out to play in the snow.

Look he’s making a snow chicken!

To relieve my stress while knitting my Eyelet Pullover I cast on for a simple ribbed gray scarf. I recently finished it. Here’s Prana modeling it for me:

When I started I had no idea who I would give it to. My friend Grant says his roommate would love a handknit scarf so I’m mailing it to him as a surprise gift.

Another cute picture of my furball:

The yarn is recycled. I found a wool sweater at the free pile (Taos has a shed by the recycling center that is full of free stuff that people donate. It’s a great place to get sweaters for yarn). The color of the yarn was beautiful but it was knit up in that 80′s blocks of color fashion. So I frogged it to repurpose the yarn. Most of the sweater was this gray yarn but I have a few balls of dark hues as well. It was a good score.

A close up of the ends:

I made a lot of progress on the Eyelet Pullover, or as I have nicknamed it the Fuck Sweater. I’ve nicknamed it this because that’s what I say most while knitting it. Fuck, fuck, fuck. You get the idea.

Sleeves and I don’t have the best history together. However, the sleeves for this sweater weren’t too stressful. Sure I had to redo a couple rows here and there but that’s par for the course on this project. On the whole they turned out great:

I finished the second sleeve at my knitting circle today. This evening I decided to piece it all together. However, the sweater and I have a history. There have been tears, mess ups, curses. Really if you just repeat that last sentence over and over you have a pretty good idea of my knitting work lately. It feels like each step of this project I’ve had to redo.

Naturally, I was wary to sew the whole thing together. I decided to test sew it first. With a contrasting color I single crocheted the peices together. The sweater looked promising.

Then I tried it on. On the whole I’m pleased:

I don’t like this picture of myself but I wanted to show the sweater. It actually looks like a sweater and highly resembles the picture in the magazine. There are some problems but nothing that caused a freakout.

First off the whole thing is a bit too big. I could have made it a size smaller I suspect. The bottom hem is supposed to be flat. For some reason my version has points that I cannot explain. The sleeves are a little too long and don’t bell out as much as they’re supposed to.

But somehow it’s all ok. I feel pretty accomplished that I’ve made it this far. I look pretty shocked in the picture. That’s me being awed that this project is so very close to being finished. I might redo the bottom hem and I’m hoping that even though the yarn is only 25% wool I can block it smaller. For now though I made it through the pattern with my sanity intact and I have a sweater. Woot.

I finished the first sleeve for the Eyelet Pullover. I knit it without crying once. And it matches the measurements in the instructions. Yay!

Tonight I’ll cast on for the second sleeve. It’s getting so close; I can’t wait until I’m done.

I’ve finished the front of the Eyelet Pullover.

Just like the back, the front is five inches too long. I pinned the two pieces together and tried them on. I think it looks ok. I guess I won’t know for sure until I’ve put all the pieces together but I take this as a good sign.

There were tears on the front side though. I finished the trim and compared it to the back side. They didn’t match! I freaked out-cussed, cried, drank wine. And then I sobbed some more. Thebes had to do a yarn intervention with me. I had to stay away from the sweater for a full day. This really helped because next day when I went back to it I was able to frog the trim and redo it correctly.

Now I’ve cast on for the first sleeve. I’ve made two sweaters so far and I had troubles with the sleeves on both. Wish me luck.