OK and Phew and All Other Such Words

I finally did it!  I finished the State Fair Cardigan, and not a day too soon for Christmas! The thing is, it wasn't even meant for Christmas. It was meant for the fall of 2014, so it's a little late. I used Knit Companion for it, and I love KC!  No magnet boards, no pencil and paper.

 The only thing is that I think Knit Companion lies.

IT says that this sweater took me 75 hours and 19 minutes to make. I started this in August, so what KC says cannot be true. I think it took thousands and millions of hours, but that's just me. Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe I forgot to turn KC on all the hundreds of times I had to frog parts of the sweater, and I think frogging time should count. 

Anyway, it's FINISHED!

(And I hope it fits. Please, please, please, sweet Mother of Purl, let it fit!)

When Will I Learn?

From Interweave magazine/Winter 2014

I have started working on this State Fair sweater for my older daughter. (Shh...) I decided to knit a sleeve first so that I could use it as a gauge swatch.  Good plan, right?

Right. Except that I forgot about using it to check my gauge until I measured to begin the bind offs for the armhole portion and then it was TOO LATE.  My gauge is too large, and the sleeve so far is 3" longer than it should be. The cuff is cabled, and gaw-jus, if I say so myself, and I do, so just folding the cuff back is not a good solution to the problem, and really, a bespoke sweater should actually fit!

So now I have to rip back to the cuff and start again, making the increases closer together. It will work out ok (as long as I make both sleeves according to the new rate of increase) so I guess I don't mind.

I just wish I had remembered to measure way sooner....