Vacation knitting

Last night, I finished the second front for the cabled sweater, which means that with the exception of the collar, all of the knitting should have been done. However, there were a few nagging details that needed to be addressed. First, the original pattern called for four buttons. Despite lengthening the body by nearly double the original pattern, I still kept the four button design. However, my math was way off when I decided how far apart to space them. (Assuming that I even did math to begin with? I don't remember, I may have just more or less estimated where they should go, which would explain a lot.) Rather than reknit, I just pulled back the three stitches involved by about eighty rows, then used a crochet hook to redo them correctly. The whole process took about an hour, and untangling the mohair to rip the stitches down accounted for at least half of that. I was surprised how easy it was to rework them. I usually have trouble ripping down adjacent stitches because it's hard to make the tension even on the redo. I think the fact that it's 1x1 ribbing helped a lot.

Here's a during (left) and after (right):

Clearly this isn't blocked yet. Isn't it amazing how much yarn the three stitches consume? When stretched out, it was nearly two inches. It seemed amazing that it all got used up again when I crocheted it back up.

Then, this morning, I reveled in the first of four days of unemployment before my new job starts (yay, vacation!) by going back and taking a look at the sleeves. They've always looked to be slightly different sizes, and sure enough, I had missed a paired increase at the elbows and omitted about 15 rows before the sleeve cap. Must have mentally wandered off there, huh? So now my "finished" sleeves look like this:



Luckily it's all easy quick stockinette, so with the bulky yarn I should be done knitting (again) by tonight barring further mishaps. :-)