Thanksgiving

Oh, my. I can't move. Well, that was my excuse on Monday. This past weekend was the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend and I managed to have Thanksgiving dinner twice - and not cook anything either time! The younger daughter (of my "man about the house") was, with her 3 house-mates, hosting their first big dinner on Saturday, as they were working on Sunday, the traditional dinner day. Wow, what a great meal. I gave a "making gravy 101" and "how to steam veggies - advanced" classes in the kitchen, but mostly all I had to do was drink wine and eat. Life is good. (I am also still completely amazed to watch young men eat ... and eat, and eat, and eat ... and still be skinny!!!)

Sunday was a traditional family dinner of 20 or so, with turkey and ham and veggies and dessert. Very, very good. It was a surprisingly warm day so most of it was spent outside and that was a lovely treat. So I decided on Monday, after such an exhausting weekend, to devote the day to knitting, to recuperate.

When I was did the Stitches Mid-West show in August, I was gifted with some beautiful, beautiful baby alpaca yarn (Catalina, Chunky, 100% Baby Alpaca). It is to die for. Really, really gorgeous. So, I decided to make a chunky pullover with a simple (ish) cable on the front. I also decided on Top Down as I'm not yet entirely sure how much yarn it will take. So the length may be determined by the number of skeins I have! Not a new concept is it :)

The prototype is being knit in some good, sturdy, Canadian yarn as I expected to (and did) rip it out more than once (OK, 3 times) before I settled into what it would do. I changed the collar a couple of times and have now decided on a large 2 x 2 rib collar with a crew neck short-row shaping. I used open increases (yarn overs) to it was easy to count where I was (for making notes) and I like the look of them.

I was particularly pleased to get the ribbing to blend into the cable at the front. Can you see it? Here's a close up.

And the back has the ribbing in the middle, which will continue and blend again into the ribbing at the bottom.

I really do like how easy it is, with the top down method, for trying on as you go. I wanted the underarms to be fairly close to the body, as I don't think you'd wear this over anything else. I put on a little cap sleeve T-shirt as my guide and had the sweater on and off to check the length of the sleeve/body to get it right. I've now split the body and sleeves. Practically the home stretch!

Can't wait to get it done - and I will FORCE myself to finish it in this wool - before I cast on with the lucious baby alpaca.

-Lynda