Plain Jane...8 years later

This sweater has been 8 years in the making. In high school I worked at a patisserie and had a wonderful Russian lady as a co-worker. She introduced me to top-down sweater construction. I went to her house a couple of afternoons, and she taught me how to do the math to design a top-down raglan sweater, with any yarn and any gauge. Unfortunately, the math and percentages have been long forgotten, and my notes are nowhere to be found. Cleaning out my stash the other day, I found the sweater, body finished, languishing at the botton of the box. I finished it, and now am awaiting my order from Renaissance Dyeing so I can start the embellishments, because, as is, this is a plain jane sweater.


I'm going to try crewel work, and I aspire to a finished product something like this or this. Pretty ambtious, huh? Here is my practice work, with regular worsted yarn.


The crewel wool I ordered comes in all kinds of luscious shades and is dyed using all-natural dyes in the Pyrenees mountains. Wish me luck!

Finished February Lady!

I could not love this sweater more; I even took the time to block it and counted down the hours until it dried! (No, I don't usually block my handknits - I know, I know, I really should!) Then with some of my great-grandma's vintage buttons, I finished it off and had to wait till DH came home to model it for the camera. Now, I just have to wait for the weather to get cold enough to actually wear it.

And I had another thought: wouldn't it be sweet to have our baby announcement picture with Baby wearing it's handmade sweater, and me wearing mine? I'm not sure what DH would wear (the sweater I knit for him when we were engaged could fit a giant; he's tall, but not that tall!).