My finished sweater, and a visit from Mom

Sorry for all the suspense, guys!

I finished the sweater on Thursday night but didn't get the last of the ends in until about ten minutes before Mom showed up. She stopped by to visit on her way home from an exciting weekend of visiting relatives. Great news: my aunt finished her PhD!

I took advantage of the occasion to have her take pictures of me in my FIRST SWEATER EVER!

Not bad for a first try, eh?

The pattern is Licorice Whip by Blue Alvarez. Top-down raglan in one piece. I used the recommended yarn because it was free! Blue Sky Alpaca Dyed Cotton, a 2-ply very soft worsted yarn.

My modifications mostly happened in the collar. I started the collar with more stitches so that it would be wider. The original pattern calls for you to knit one round, then knit three rounds tbl, then k2tog, YO for a round, knit a round plain, and then knit another round tbl. I had just picked up addis for the first time and found knitting tbl to be horribly unpleasant, so I skipped two of the first three tbl rounds. Then I decided the designer was smarter than me, so I ripped out the first few rows (such a pain! omg!) and redid it to match the bottom and the sleeves. I guess that means there are no cast-on edges on the sweater at all. Crazy!

In all it's a great fit, a great pattern, and I'm super pleased with the result. Sadly a warm front is currently making my poor city very hot and soggy, so I'll have to wait till January (when winter gets here) to wear it. Ah, the pain of being a knitter in the South!

(Ok, I will totally wear it before then. The good thing about being a knitter in the South, especially a cold-natured knitter in the south, is that air conditioning does for us what the weather does everywhere else. All year round)

While Mom was here I forced her to model her socks so I could finally take a picture of them. Yay!


Student-teacher sock conference.


These are the bears I'm making. I'm doing the pattern kind of "freehand," which is to say I have no pattern at all. I'm calling them "raglan bears" because their shoulders use raglan shaping. I'm using the yarn left over from the sweater for cuddly little brown bears. Actual size without legs: 3" Yes, I will put legs on them. ;-)