It came out a bit bigger than I was hoping (and kind of grew when I washed it before giving it to my dad), so he has to roll up the sleeves double, which is kind of too bad. But he didn’t realize it wasn’t store bought until he read the tag I attached to it! :D

I knit this as a surprise for my dad’s birthday, so I couldn’t let anyone see me, so that made it take a lot longer as I could only work on it when I could hide in my room when no one would be suspicious, and I had to have other projects going as my “public projects.” So during the time I was knitting this, I also started and finished both a lace blouse and lace dress.

I love how simple the pattern is (sooo hard to find a nice men’s pattern that isn’t too fancy looking for a man), and I absolutely love the collar! It gives it such a professional look! I sewed a little black X into the middle of the back of the neck on the inside fold (since it’s folded over, it doesn’t show on the right side of the sweater) to mark the back so he doesn’t accidentally put it on backwards. I just need to downsize the whole thing, and definitely shorten the sleeves. I also did a 1x1 rib on the bottom and cuffs instead of the 2x2.

According to the pattern, 5 skeins should have been plenty. 4 out of the 5 were almost identical! But the 5th one was a tiny bit lighter, and since I thought there was a chance I wouldn’t need the 5th, I saved it for last (instead of integrating it in with the others, which I should have done), so it shows up on the right shoulder as a pretty stark difference, at least to me. And I wound up needing to buy a 6th and using almost all of it. That skein was also a slightly different hue, had more red in it, but thankfully that one wasn’t so obvious.