back in blue!

Well, teal, probably, but that doesn't make a good post title. Hi! Sorry I was gone so long, but my Arwen yarn was just not working out. Too thick, too pilly, wrong color. So I embarked on a massive search for the right yarn, found the right color in the wrong fiber, the right gauge in the wrong color, the right yarn on the wrong continent, etc. I finally settled on this Zara merino from my LYS which does not have the right gauge, so now I have to re-math everything, always fun. It is nice and stretchy - perhaps even stretchy enough to hide a miscalculation or two.

But I have finally cast on, and am making fairly good progress. Changes to this pattern thus far:

• as you may recall, I hate, hate, hate seaming (never sew when you can knit!), so I'll be making it in one piece.
  
• Also, while the finished sweaters all look just fantastic, I've decided I don't want the hem on mine, so I have an inch of seed stitch at the bottom instead.
  
• I also decided to include some shaping, inspired by the math4knitters podcast.
  
• That backward-loop cast-on made grafting the sleeve together a total nightmare. Provisional cast-on, from here on out.
  
• And I am seriously considering leaving off the hood, but I still have some time to decide on that.

So! Again I apologize for my long absence, but there really was nothing to report, just a lot of teeth-gnashing. I've got about two inches knit so far, and will post an image of the seed-stitch border in a few days.