Not Modest

Not about this particular accomplishment, anyway.  Look what I made!!

The sweater itself, however, is quite modest, both in style and in difficulty.  A quick, inexpensive knit (I used 2 skeins of Cascade Eco +, for a grand total of about $32.), I can’t think of a better first sweater project than Shalom.  With Lily’s help (which I probably wouldn’t have needed if I weren’t so prone to silly math mistakes), I adjusted the yoke sizing to fit me and to eliminate a lot of the openness of the original design.  I will admit that I had to knit most of the body twice, but that was mostly my fault.  Though the projects I admired most on Ravelry all omitted the waist shaping, I was convinced that doing so would effectively turn my pretty sweater into a fuzzy blue marshmallow costume.  So I increased the waist shaping.  When I proudly donned the completed sweater, however, I realized that I had knitted a sweater with essentially no front.  Whoops.  The second time around, I kept only the first set of waist-shaping decreases, and am much happier with the result.  And even with this setback, I went from skein to sweater in exactly three (busy) weeks.

The buttons came from Orit Dotan’s Etsy shop, which, if you like buttons, is a very hazardous place.  (I managed to escape with only these and a couple sets of smaller buttons, for which I have grand plans.)  I love that these buttons pick up the varying shades of blue, turquoise, and yellow in this yarn.  (The shade is Lake Chelan Heather, #9451, if you’re interested.)

If you’re wondering what I might want with a wool sweater in April, with spring in full swing and summer on the horizon, I can only assume that you haven’t had much experience with Bay Area weather.  Though we’ll get a bit of summery weather, most of it won’t appear until September, and until then we’ll have plenty of foggy, windy, chilly days in our city by the bay.  It’s a good deal warmer at my home south of the city, but I have a feeling that this sweater will be welcome company at the office, on trips to the beach, evening concerts in the park, and long walks with the dogs for many months to come.

A word of warning to you, before we part: for those new to sweater knitting, Shalom could be a bit dangerous.  Its confidence-building powers are such that while it was still blocking, I began swatching for my next sweater project.  It might be the gateway drug of knitting.