Awww, blerg.

I decided to stall on the Buttony sweater and try something easier for my first full sweater. You know. Ease into it. RIGHT.

Since I have a ton of this blueberry alpaca and the pattern was free and I already had the needles I needed, I decided to jump into "Cabled" by Hinke. It looked so forgiving. (Unfortunately, there is much to forgive with me.) To the left is what it SHOULD look like which will make my sweater downright comedic.

It's not a hard pattern but it does need a little finesse. I'm getting to practice my cables and I'm also learning to pick up stitches along the side too. My main issue is you do all these sections and you have to keep all the stitches active-- so you rarely bind off. I have multiple areas tied to scrap yarn until I come back to them but I still have to break the yarn... you know, so I can be knitting somewhere else on this thing. Maybe there are standard ways of handling this stuff of which I am just ignorant.

Anyway, I've finished the front bottom, the straps that everything attaches to and most of one sleeve. I'm trying really hard to stay optimistic. I'm concerned that A) it will not fit (the bottom seems small and the sleeves seem big) and B) it will look so homemade I won't wear it.

I'm admittedly not a good knitter as I've only been at it for a couple of months and there are definite trouble spots that I'm hoping to correct later once the whole things is finished. (Got a crash course in fixing a dropped stitch that fell down about 4 rows last night. This is when it's nice to have a crochet hook handy...)

I really hope this is one of those times when the finished product is far better than the process. Ahhh well. Elizabeth Zimmerman's raglan construction (a la buttony) seems far less intimidating at the moment.