February/March Sweater

I DID start the February sweater in February! But being me, i had to rip out 2 1/2 inches of the yoke 3 different times. The first time I just didn't like the cast on edge (that was only about an inch of yoke before ripping). The second time i forgot the buttonholes... even though I read through the entire pattern AND read, on ravelry, everyone else bitch about forgetting the buttonholes. The third time I didn't like the way buttonholes looked, they were too close to the edge and too loose and floppy. So I got through all of that... which actually only took me a day and a half to reknit it three times...
The next saga was me swatching for the lace pattern. Also a me trait is to want to alter the hell out of anything that i do. I wanted to use a different lace pattern. So I hauled out all of my Barbara walker treasuries and my Vogue Stitchionary and found a couple of lace patterns. I found one that i loved. Did I swatch for it? nope! I just picked up my yoke that had been reknit 3 times and went for it.
I knit a couple of repeats of the lace pattern (a 6 row repeat) and it just didn't look right. So I ripped it out and did it again.... It just looked HORRID in that yarn.

So on to look for a different lace pattern. This time I would be "smart" and swatch first. I found one and I thought would be perfect, swatching I a went. I knit a few inches of the swatch before it donned on me that the sweater is knit from the top down.. and the sweet little heart lace that I chose would be upside down hearts and in actuality would look like butts. So I gave in and knit the gull stitch pattern that EZ used. Aside from the the one row where i screwed up the lace, it's offset a little, it is looking great and I love it. I have another inch to go before I start the sleeves.
I have already purchased the yarn to make a punkrawkpurl sized February Sweater. It is Rowan Cocoon, which is only the dreamiest yarn ever. OK not EVER... it's just the dreamiest yarn ever... for this post. The color I had envisioned using for this project, Crag, was not available at AP. I thought about the color Polar... which may be pretty on me... but i can just see me knitting a white sweater for months to spill grape juice on it. I don't actually drink a lot of grape juice, it just provided the most dramatic scenario. So I looked at a couple of the tan/beigey colors, everyone agreed that they were too similar to my skin tone and looked gross on me. So I went for Mountain... it's darker than i wanted, but it is gorgeous. A friend said that it was too close to my hair color, another friend said that she was concerned the lace pattern would get lost in yarn that dark. So I added the color scree to the mix for the yoke to break up the separation of my hair and the Mountain color. Besides I will just plan to always wear my hair up with a white shirt underneath... problems solved. I am going to squish the numbers, swatch, cast on and just go! Itching to start before I finish the mini version.
Saturday night speedyneedlefreeman, wondermike, Kim-Chi Crafts, Knit Ya Ya!, and special guests KNITSONYA came over. It was a knitting food fest. We had red velvet cake, an awesome bean salad, roasted potatoes, fancy cheeses and breads, homemade pizzas, thin mint girl scout cookies... yummmmm! hizKNITS was sadly missed.