It's Done...Mostly

Well, I finally finished the Katharine Hepburn sweater from Lace Style, and though I'm happy to be done, I can't say I'm thrilled with the finished product. It was a beautifully written pattern, and enjoyable to knit (although I think I unknit almost as many stitches as I knit, due to brain malfunctions). The pattern called for merino, but I saw one knit up in the Knitpicks catalogue in Shine, so I thought I'd try that, because they had a color I loved, at a great price and it's machine washable. (I noticed when I went back to make the link that the sweater was shown flat and not on a model - hmmmm.) While I still love the color, I know why the pattern wasn't knit in cotton - the finished product is HEAVY! Here's an odd picture of it drying:

As the fabric has a lot of lacework, this causes it to be dragged down a bit. I think I'll sew some seam binding (or ribbon - wouldn't it be great if I actually had either of those things?) into the shoulder seams to help it be more stable. Here's a close-up of the lacework and cables (the color seems to be closest to this picture - how can 3 pictures of the same thing look so vastly different?):

And, sadly, this is a picture of me wearing it. The Professor was sitting down when he took this, so it has a slightly odd (and DOWDY!) perspective:

The sleeves are supposed to be 3/4 length, but because of the weight issue, they hang almost to my wrists. Almost, as in it looks like I made it too short. I'm hoping that stabilizing the seams will help, and of course it still needs buttons.

I really liked knitting this, and may go back someday and knit it in wool - it was a big disappointment, once it was all together, to see how the cotton behaved, but I guess this is how we learn. I think that it is also helping me get over my cheapie-ness when it comes to yarn. If I'm going to spend that many hours making a sweater, I should just suck it up and spend the bucks, and then I can have something beautiful that can be worn for a long time. The hard part will be remembering that when I'm standing in the yarn store saying "You mean it will cost how much?"