Will work in the round, because stranding on the Purl side is a pain in the rear and the less I have to do, the happier I will be.

I’m shooting for roughly 5.75-6 stitches per inch in the stranded knitting.

Yarn #3 is ordered… Let’s try again!

Added eight stitches (two at each edge x4) and getting about 5.75 stitches & 6.25 rows per inch.

I’m concerned about the colorfastness of the black. I’ll make sure to get some color catching sheets when I block this.

One thing I love about the yarn however, is its softness. It’s knitting up like butter.

December 28th Coming along nicely. Pictures aren’t so great (it was early morning and pretty dark!), but the body is done and I’ve pinned it on my dress form… it looks like it’s going to fit well. I’ve done the math for the sleeves and I’m going to make an adjustment or two for my gauge:

CO 17 stitches, do three increases at the end of each row twenty-two times for a total of 83 stitches. If the Pythagorean theorem works, it should be pretty close to what I have on the armhole on the body.

Ending after a RS row, I’ll join to start working in the round, work 2 rounds even, then k2tog at the beginning and ssk at the end of the next round, then work six rows even. Repeat italicized 16 more times (49 stitches). Then work even to 22” total length - revised.

January 2nd Got the first sleeve done and revised slightly and started the second (the first was about a half inch too big around the armhole; I could have eased it in, but better to be closer in this case, I think). I’m on the third decrease and hope to finish the second sleeve sometime this week.

I’m going to test doing a 3-stitch applied I-cord edge to the cuffs and collar.

January 5th I’m at that point in a project where I can see the end coming… you know, that time when you really want to finish, but you don’t want to rush so much that you screw up what you’ve done so far; the time when you hope the work that you’ve put in will actually go together and look decent…

I’ve got twelve more rows on the second sleeve, seaming and edging and then I’m done. I haven’t yet started on the second hank of white, and I may just be able to finish with less than five hanks of black, making this sweater pretty economical for merino & silk ($37.44)!

January 6th Ta da! We have sleeves. They’re only pinned on, but they’re done.

I took a couple of really terrible pictures this morning… got to get a better picture of the edge I used on the cuffs. I’m still a little undecided if I’ll use that finish on the collar or not, but I’m thinking right now that I like it.

The plan for tonight is to steam block, baste all the seams, and try to get at least the shoulder seams completed. Tomorrow is Saturday, but I’m supposed to do product photos for my job, so I’m not sure I’ll be able to work on it much this weekend.

Screw it. If the work photos don’t get done, they can wait a couple of days. Priorities, man!

January 8th I stayed up until 2:00 am and got this finished.

I love how the collar finish turned out: I picked up 101 stitches and used a needle that was one size smaller, then did a three stitch I-cord bind off. The bind off itself has stretch, but the collar has stability with the picked up edge so it won’t stretch out of shape. I believe I’ll use this on just about any pattern that calls for a single crochet edge; imo it looks much neater.