Surprisingly Addictive

I have started to work on my first sweater built without a pattern. I am kind of hesitant to call it an original design at the moment as I lifted the stitch pattern idea from a Gap sweater I own. I know, I know, how does a knitter still buy sweaters from the Gap? Well in my defence it was two years ago and later that day I was flying to London for a year with unknown ideas of having time to knit myself a sweater for the winter. As it turns out I did very little knitting that year and that Gap sweater is now a favourite.

Particularly because of the alternating mini cables and raised eyelet sections. On the Gap sweater, it gives an overall effect of being a fancy version of waffle type long underwear top. But I thought it would be a good way to showcase the 10 balls worth of hand painted VIP I have hanging around. I dyed it myself so am somewhat determined to actually make something with it.

I'm working on 2.5 mm needles and after working 3 inches of ribbing on straights, I finally decided to save my forearms and buy a circular. Despite the mind boggling gauge of 38 sts/ 4 in and that I'm working the fronts and back in one piece (376 sts in a row), I find this project to be quite addictive to work on. I'm alternating between two balls every right side row to fight pooling and skein colour variations which only seems to make it more entertaining to keep knitting more and more and more.



Check out the lovely effect of the finished piece. I thought that maybe there's too much of the little bitty cable, but it's growing on me quite a lot as it's growing.



My curiosity got the better of me with the Secret Knitting CD and I started them with some very nice Fleece Artist Sea Wool. They are quite curiously worked flat for some reason, but I'll stick with it and maybe there's a compelling reason for it. Too bad these aren't quite as addictive as my cardigan. Maybe part of the addictive qualities of the cardigan is that I really don't know what it's going to be like when finished. I'm pretty stoked to see the finished product. Should be pretty sweet.

I'm sure I'll finish the sweater before these socks.