Olympic Sweater Progress, Plus A Couple of Notes, Plus Some Other Stuff

I didn't show you the second sleeve, because it looked pretty much like the first.


Ok, here's proof I have two sleeves:


Then I started seaming. I love it when the designer pays attention to things like the ribbing matching up after seaming, so I always check for that in the pattern when I start, and if it isn't going to match up, I change it so it will (in this case, the pattern had nice attention to detail and I didn't change anything.)


For instance, if you have a 2x2 rib, you will need both side seams to start (or end) with two knit stitches, when you take one of each of those into the side seam (picture above), then you will end up with 2 knits total, so the ribbing will be continuous all the way around.

Then I sewed the shoulder seams and knit the shawl collar:


I usually block my pieces before I sew them together, as I did with this sweater. It makes them nice and flat and easy to sew together, plus it allows the yarn to relax and grow like wool usually does when you wash it. In this case, it grew a lot. My swatch went from 16 stitches/ 4" to 15 stitches/4". On a 48" sweater, that means it would grow almost 4 inches all the way around. This is why I always wash my swatches!

Ok, so why I'm telling you this, is that the body of the sweater has been blocked and "relaxed", but the collar has been knit on, and is not relaxed. Sometimes I am tempted to skip the next step, to be done. But it is important that I either re-block the entire sweater, or at least the collar part. In the interest of time, this time I just made the collar portion wet and left the rest dry.

Here is the collar before blocking (see how the ribbing is pulling the bottom up, and the collar looks small and tight):


And here it is, after:


Meanwhile, I am starting to see the pattern emerge on Ene's scarf. It looks black in this picture, but the color is really a heathery blue. It is gorgeous and I'll show that to you soon.


Also, getting geared up to return to my pre-Olympic multiple project ways, I was rummaging through the bin and discovered a few things that I was intending to use for accessories this fall/winter.

I am hoping to use my last few days of Olympic knitting to crank out a couple of small things I really wanted to make this year.