I bought this book purely for this sweater. It took me awhile to get to it and when I started it, I had a few issues. For some reason, two of the cables were written incorrectly - more specifically, they were written backwards. I think I’ve figured them out (and I’m a bit puzzled that no one else has had this problem…), so I’ve frogged the part that I had already completed and am eager to start again.

8/21/11 - I picked this up the other day to restart it. It had been abandoned after I had figured out how to do the cables correctly because I picked it up (the day after I took those photos, I think) and realized that it was stupid to knit it flat when I could knit it in the round. For some reason, after that decision, I just didn’t rip it out to restart it in the round. So it’s been sitting in bags in my stash, waiting to be restarted and made into an actual wearable sweater. It’s back in hibernation again, since it’s far to warm out to be working on such a heavyweight sweater, but it has been restarted and the ribbing is completed. I also decided to drop down to a size small for it since the last Rowan sweater I made was so huge that I’m actively planning to rip it out and reknit it in a smaller size.

11/4/11 - I’m so perplexed by this project. I’ve started it again for real and I’m loving the cables, loving the details and the way the yarn feels in my hands…I mean, this is just an AWESOME pairing,I think. However…all of those mis-crossed cables that I took all of the time to figure out? It’s like they never existed. I keep looking at all of my corrections and I don’t know how to say it, but they’re all wrong. The way they were written in the pattern is right. I’m completely baffled by this since I had tried the original 6 or 7 times before realizing that they were incorrectly written, and someone else told me they had this issue as well. I mean, the cables weren’t just miscrossed - the pattern was telling me to purl when I should be knitting, knit when I needed to purl…and now the pattern seems to be perfectly fine. I’m baffled by this and really wishing I had taken better notes before or some photographs of the issue, but as long as I can knit it, who cares?

11/13/11 - I’m so very in love with this project right now. I can’t really remember the last time I cabled something, so maybe that’s part of my love for it - I do so love crossing stitches over top of one another. But this yarn - oh GOD this yarn is amazing. I love it. I could knit with it endlessly and be happy. The stitch definition it makes is beyond heavenly, and it’s so soft that it feels like the underside of a warm cat belly. I’m past the point where I was when I realized it was stupid to do this as two separate pieces and began knitting it in the round, and it looks great. Last night, I finished one full chart repeat; since that’s 32 rounds, that’s quite a nice chunk of knitting. I feel like it’s only going to go quicker from here!

Since my last Rowan sweater was so much bigger than I anticipated, I’m working this up in the smallest size…but then of course I worried that it would be too small and hug me in ALL the wrong ways, so I popped if off the needles last night, put it on a scrap piece of yarn, and tried it on. It fits BEAUTIFULLY. I even held it up over my chest, just to make sure it’d fit there too, and it looked fabulous. (Well, okay, not really - it looked like I was holding a five-inch wide band of cables over my naked boobs, which made me feel like I was about to take part in some odd knitter fetish sex thing, so I decided to just be satisfied that my boobs did indeed fit inside of the circle I was creating and let it go at that.) I’ve got to say, this is one of those moments where you go, “Ohhhh - AWESOME!” because you suddenly realize that this thing you’re creating is, in fact, going to be a sweater. There’s enough of it made that I could look at it and recognize that yes, there IS a garment at work in there. Considering how much the wind is up today, I think I’m going to be very happy that there will be a heavy sweater coming out of this!

12/12/11 - The sweater is going smashingly! There’s a crazy (intensely crazy) part of me that honestly believes I can have it finished before Christmas, but I don’t really believe that. Not really and truly, since I do have a full-time job that sucks up knitting parts of the day. However, the body is DONE, and I even wove in all of the ends on Saturday and seamed the shoulders. I tried it on prior to doing all the weaving, just in case it didn’t fit…more than once have I woven in the yarn ends perfectly only to discover that the sweater doesn’t fit, and then I have to spend 15 minutes trying to find them to pick them out. I had nothing to worry about at all because it fits like a dream…a warm, luxurious dream. I’ve started on the sleeve and am once more horrified by how long it seems to take to create sleeves. In my mind, you should be able to do a sleeve in a day, maybe two…that is so not how it works. I keep reminding myself that if it takes 2 straight weeks to make a pair of socks when that’s the only project I’m working on, it’s going to take at least that long to do sleeves since they’re longer than my foot.

Maybe before New Years…

I added in 2 needle sizes. I used the size 4s only to cast on for the sleeves so the cuff wouldn’t be too tight. The size 7s were for casting off the neckline of the body, since it seemed just a smidge tight and, according to Anya, I do a tight cast-off.

1/9/12 - I’m so close - so close I can taste it. I’m just about to finish the second sleeve. If I really wanted to, I could stay up late tonight and knock it out. I know I could. But it’s late already, and I have such difficulties getting up when my alarm goes off, I don’t need to exacerbate it by staying up late to finish the sleeve cap. But I think tomorrow, both sleeves will be finished.
I’m really excited - I have this coming Monday off because my workplace ROCKS and I have all government holidays off! I’m thinking that this sweater will be able to be finished by the end of the day on Monday. Really, it’s not such a stretch - all I need to do is finish this sleeve, sew on the sleeves, pick up the stitches for the cowl neck, and do that. That’s literally it, because I’ve already woven in all the ends for both the body AND the sleeves. I figured if I was diligent about that while I went along, I wouldn’t have 2 hours of finishing to do once the sweater is “complete”. I’m so excited - this longstanding WIP will be my first FO of the new year!!!

1/16 - So close. I think I’ll be finished tomorrow. If I wanted, I could probably be finished tonight, but tomorrow it’s back to work and I want to get a good sleep. Plus, I have stacks of papers that I’ve been ignoring so I can work on this sweater instead. I set in the sleeves over the weekend - I must say, I really really LOVED this article in Knitty about attaching sleeves, it describes the technique PERFECTLY. It’s this sort of thing that I wish I’d known when I was just starting out learning how to put things together so that my sweaters would have nice finishing. Now I’m onto the cowl neckline. I’ve been trying to use the cabling with no cable technique for the first time ever. It’s a little fiddly but going well, and I can see why so many people like and use it.

1/22/12 - Crap. Crap crap crap crap crap.
The neckline has NOT worked out the way it was supposed to at all. It’s supposed to be this drapey cowl, which is a neckline that I love and adore and totally look awesome in. But instead, it’s standing up, like a turtleneck, but is too WIDE to be a turtleneck, so it looks like I’ve got an Elizabethan ruff going on instead. Crap. I cast off and everything!
I’m putting this aside for the night while I try to figure out my next move. Pick up a lot more stitches and try to make the whole neckline wider? Rip back and just put a nice rib on for the collar?
Damn. That neckline is part of what drew me to this sweater in the first place, and I really hate that now I won’t get to have it.

1/30/12 - I owe a HUGE thank you to Emily (TelmahQ) for her calm suggestion to block the sweater before freaking out, ripping back, and trying to change everything. If I had only blocked the original swatch I had done for this pattern, long ago frogged and knitted in, I’m sure, I would have remembered how much the yarn relaxes and becomes gorgeously drapey once it hits the water. The problems with the neckline? Entirely gone. This sweater is easily the most wonderful, beautiful, professional looking things I have ever in my life created. There’s a part of me that can’t believe I’m actually wearing it, that’s how beautiful it is.

Given how much the yarn loosened up, the sleeves grew in length. I knew I should probably have made them shorter than the pattern called for, given my true arm measurements. But like a fool, I thought that the pattern must surely know something I don’t. When will I learn not to trust pattern designers any more than I trust clothing sizes in stores that claim to be a size 6 or 8 or whatever, knowing full well that not all size 6s fit the same? The sleeves grew a few inches, and since I want this sweater to fit as well as is humanly possible, I decided to cut them off just below one of the cables and just add on a ribbing there. This proved to be slightly more difficult than I’d expected, purely because the sweater was knit cuff-up and I was now trying to tink back cuff-down. Ever tried to rip out knitting from the wrong end? It doesn’t work. It would be hard enough to do so on garter or stockinette but was ridiculously challenging with seed stitch and the cables. It took several hours for me to really get the stitches on the needles to my satisfaction. After that, it was smooth sailing with doing the ribbing - after all, 15 rounds of ribbing over just 54 stitches is fast work. It bugs the heck out of me that I new have several sad looking balls of frogged yarn from the sleeve parts that I cut off - if I had just made the arms shorter the way instinct told me to, they would have been pristine! Oh well, maybe this will teach me that lesson. I’m wearing the sweater this very moment - I know that I need to re-block it to make the arms fall the way they actually should. Right now, the sleeves seem just a hair too short, but I get the feeling a re-soaking will make them blossom. It was such an accomplishment though, there was no way I could NOT wear this sweater today. I’m glad the weather is heating up again tomorrow - I think that it being too warm for me to wear this sweater out will be the ONLY way that I am willing to remove it from my body.

I’ve decided to rename this project. This shouldn’t be a surprise, given that my original name for it here on Rav was the ever so imaginative “Beautiful Pink Rowan Sweater”. It’s the name a scientist would come up. That says to me just how long ago I started this project and listed it on Rav - it was before I really got involved with Rav, before Sarah with her endlessly creative names and inspiration photos came on. I’ve named this sweater Perseverance - it took me years to finish it, but once I really sat down and focused on it, it was so easy to accomplish. I feel like this is yet another long-standing WIP that I have kicked to the curb. The only other one that’s been around for a long long time is the Mary Poppins back, and that one’s day of reckoning is fast approaching. I’m thinking by the end of February I might have tackled and finished that one.

It just hit me - this is my first FO of 2012! What a fantastic way to start the year.