Let me introduce myself.....

having just joined you!

For a number of years I've knit my adult daughter a sweater for Christmas. Its gotten to be a family joke as about this time of the year I ask her what sweater she wants and what color, then I work on it through the summer in the car as I'm travelling to art shows.

This year Arwen was her choice, BUT, there are always things she wants me to change (one of these days I'm going to have to work my way up to just designing something totally from scratch!)



Here is the swatch after I finally achieved cables! I've never knit from a chart before, so this was a little challenging, but I think I've got it.

I'm using a Caron yarn, and in the St st I've been able to achieve guage in number of stitches but not in number of rows. I haven't the faintest notion how that can happen, or how to fix it, so I'm thinking I will just have to knit fewer rows to finish. (This yarn was chosen for color, price and the fact that my daughter absolutely can not wear wool)

So, here are the things that I'll be doing that will be slightly different to make this truly a good fit for my daughter:

1) put a zipper in the front ... basically this means I'll just be knitting to a size smaller for the pattern except on the lengths of things

2) make it longer ... she loves the cables, loves the "hoodie", but hates where this will hit on her

I'm considering knitting a band of the cables to the size the bottom of the sweater would be then picking up the stitches on the side of the band and knitting up from there, I just haven't figured out how the intersection between the two bands of cables will work. This would also mean I will be knitting all in a piece, and I'm not at all sure about the logistics of the sleeve and hoodie when I get there.

So, any helpful suggestions would be great.

I'm looking forward to "talking" to you all!

Minor Modification

I just wanted to show one thing I've done differently from the instructions. I doubt I am the only one to have done this, but I thought I would share for those early in the process. I knit the hem together with the body of the sweater rather than waiting and sewing them together later. I learned to do this when knitting from the book Hats On! (an excellent book with great patterns and techniques) by Charlene Schurch.

I am still working along on the right front. My progress is a bit slow as other projects keep jumping in the way. It's nice to keep a gentler pace on this. For speed knitting, I have Sock Madness.

Greetings & Salutations!

Hello All!
Another newbie here to let you know I'm truly excited to contribute to this- my first KAL! Thanks for having me. I'll be starting my CfA soon with some Berrocco Touche in a pale blue that matches the one featured in IK. I look forward to knitting it in one piece, like alala. My fingers are crossed that it will go well. Thanks for all the postings so far. It's really inspirational to see the FOs as well as find out the scoop on how the pattern is working for different people. Good luck to all who are still in the process!

sleeve length

I'll be blocking and sewing up my Arwen over the next few days with final picture coming soon, but in the meantime I made an accidental discovery that may help folks who are concerned about the sleeves being too long. (I'm a new knitter, so excuse me if my discovery is obvious to everyone but me.) You can control the length of the sleeves by how tightly you bind off the sleeve stitches. I accidentally bound off my right sleeve a bit tighter than my left and it came out over an inch shorter! Happily that's an easy fix :)

Nadine

sleeve length

I'll be blocking and sewing up my Arwen over the next few days with final picture coming soon, but in the meantime I made an accidental discovery that may help folks who are concerned about the sleeves being too long. (I'm a new knitter, so excuse me if my discovery is obvious to everyone but me.) You can control the length of the sleeves by how tightly you bind off the sleeve stitches. I accidentally bound off my right sleeve a bit tighter than my left and it came out over an inch shorter! Happily that's an easy fix :)

Nadine

Hooray!

I've just done a bit of (overdue, again... sorry!) maintenance, sent out a batch of invitations and updated the list of finished Arwens. Should YOUR Arwen be on the finished list? Let us know and we'll make sure it appears there.

My own Arwen continues to languish. I've been determined to knit this sweater from stash yarn, and I think I've finally found one that will get me gauge (Briggs and Little 2-ply) but I'm unenthusiastic about the color. Sigh...

Done!

My Arwen made her debut in San Francisco this past weekend, here modeled in Chinatown by my friend P. There are more photos and pretty detailed notes on my blog about my process, including my modifications to the sleeves and hood. I enjoyed knitting this sweater a lot, but am even more pleased that it fits P. well and that she really likes it.

Cheers,
Elizabeth

Almost done!

The finish line is in sight for my Arwen - I've got about 9" of the hood, so only 4" and the grafting to go:



I'm not a big fan of finishing, so I decided to seam it all up and knit the hood in one piece. All the ends are woven in and I sewed the hem in place, so once I graft the hood seam, I'm done!

I'm giving this sweater to a friend when I visit her next week, so I'll (hopefully) post some finished shots of her wearing it after that.

Progress

Just thought I'd drop by and update. I've got nearly 13 inches done of the front panel. I want to finish up the sleeves and front panels soon so taht I can start the back. I have been getting tips from my sister Jessica for the tree design that I plan to do. It looks complicated, and it's much larger than any of the charts I have worked with so far, but I think it will present a good challenge.

Becki

Arwen pics

Back from vacation, so I decided to post my pics. Though I'm happy with the outcome, I really suck at seaming, so I have to twist the sweater around a bit, everytime I wear it, so it doesn't look lopsided. I even made a matching Apres Ski Kerchief from Handknit Holidays, since I have so much yarn left over.

Rethinking Arwen

Well, I've run into a few problems, and Arwen's on hiatus until I resolve them. I think I may have mentioned that the half-merino, half-plastic yarn I bought for the project is just not working out. It's too heathery, it kind of hides the cables, and the cables are also much too thick. It'd feel like I'm wearing armor. Plus I suspect it will pill like a crazy... pilling... thing.

So I bought purple yarn at Wolle Rödel, but it's not a good purple, it's much lighter than in that picture. I took that back today. The yarn lady and I scouted the store and I found a nice dark bluey-green in something like the right size (for size 8 needles, or 5mm), but it's half-cotton, half plastic, and I'm trying to get away from the plastic. The Yarn lady said the cotton-plastic won't pill, so I bought one ball of it, and am re-swatching Arwen.

But the gauge isn't exactly right, so I'll have to re-math the whole thing. And if I'm going to re-math it, I might as well just buy the bluey-green 100% merino at my LYS, which wants size 6 (3.5mm) needles, and not have to deal with plastic yarn. Argh, this is difficult.

Maybe I'll buy the 100% merino, knit the pattern without re-mathing, and then send the sweater to whichever of my nieces it turns out to fit.

Done!

I finished the seaming last night! There are a few things I might want to tweak as time goes by (the hood seam, for one) but...well, she is DONE. I've got an extremely blurry mirror-picture on my blog. I'll get some good pictures up soon! Thanks for the KAL, it has been inspiring. I look forward to seeing some more finished Arwens.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Arwen is OTN!

I have finally been able to get gauge with my second yarn of choice, Aurora 8, and have cast on! Yee-haw! I am a slow knitter and have lots of other things going on, both knitting and non-knitting related, so this will be slow-going for me. I'm glad that there are other newbies joining to keep me company.

I am very impressed with everyone's progress. Some of you are just spitting this sweater out! Are you speed knitters? Do you forgo sleep to knit? Do brownies come work on Arwen while you sleep? Wow, you guys are fast!

You can read about the saga of the gauge for Arwen and other fascinating items on my blog.