"if you want to destroy my sweater, pull this string as I walk away..."

All done!

ok, almost all done. I still have to sew on the pockets and the buttons. And for some reason I've got Weezer stuck in my brain.. ouch!

If you recall when I originally posted about the sweater I thought I might like some vintage minty green shell or mother of pearl buttons. The big box craft store had a huge sale last weekend and all their buttons were half off so I bought a whole bunch, half of which I will probably never use.

I found some green shell buttons similar to what I'd imagined:

Hmm, no, not quite right. A little too boring and a little too shiny. Maybe if they'd been just a touch bigger and had a little ridge around the edge... but these just don't work.

I also found these buttons:

If only I could get my silly camera to focus on them! They're quite lovely and my blurry picture does not do them justice. They're just barely big enough, the patina and the color go perfectly with the yarn and, the detail gives them texture and pop. These buttons rock! I just gotta sew them on.

So, I learned a few things while knitting this sweater:

• Small mistakes aren't that hard to hide, especially in a piece like this, so long as you keep your stitch count right and don't do something really fugly.
• Those cheep plastic stitch markers suck. They constantly feel like they're going to break, they don't slide nicely over the needles, and they feel just plain wrong in your hands. Cotton scrap yarn works much better (cotton so it doesn't shed contrasting fibers on your work).
• Short circular needles have short needle parts. Short needle parts can be awkward.
  
• Ah hah! I'm a texture/feel-it girl. The way the whole thing feels and moves in my hands makes a huge difference in how much I enjoy knitting it. I know this seems like a no-brainer, but I usually think of myself as a process girl. For knitting, it seems, the feel is super important. The process is important, too, but it plays second fiddle. This explains my early distaste for inexpensive aluminum needles and my instantaneous aversion to those nasty plastic stitch markers.
  
• When it comes to finishing a nice warm sweater like this, motivation plummets when temperatures rise. Duh! Or maybe it's just that I enjoy the knitting part a whole heck of a lot more than the finishing work, even when the finishing is minimal. Also, Duh.
  
• There were errors in this pattern. *GASP* The Horror! Ok, no big deal. I've got the mad math skillz. Or at least enough math skills to sort out stitch count errors and the like. I was actually surprised that the errors and occasional vague instructions didn't cause me any real difficulty. Maybe I'm better at this than I thought!
  

So, sweater's done. Or, at least the knitting part is done. That's one knitting challenge down and many more to go. Time to move on to socks!

Actually, I moved on to socks last night. Hey, nice lady from the Whitmore Lake Yarn Co? Ya know that addi TURBO circular needle you talked me into buying when I thought I wanted a bamboo one? Wow! This is truly fantastically amazing. I love it. I want more. Thank you!


... If you want to destroy my sweater (wa wa)
pull this string as I walk away.
Watch me unravel, I'll soon be naked
lying on the floor, lying on the floor..
I've come undone...

(ugh! that song is a brain worm! help!!)