Mason: Just in time for the cold.

So, here's another post I started writing eons ago and have finally gotten around to finishing. It's taken me ages to get the pictures taken for it, during which time I've been busy with holidays, other projects and the start of the semester and the accompanying onslaught of student emails. I've got a couple more posts that I'm working on and should have up in the next couple of weeks as well. I hate to let this space languish for too long. Anyway, without a further ado, here we go.

I finally finished the sweater I've been working on for my husband! It took me just under a year (and by "just under" I really mean it. I think I was about 5 days short of the one year mark.) to finish this thing. Despite being knitted in bulky weight yarn and on #11 needles, it's about twice the size of anything I usually knit. Long arms and a 44" chest make for a large project, and one that's very difficult to block when you're used to pinning things out on your ironing board. I won't go into full details about yarn, etcetera on here, but if you're interested you can see the full project notes on my Ravelry project page.

I apologize for the harsh light in these photos, but it's been super overcast, freezing, and we didn't get around to taking pictures until this evening so the light was all around atrocious. I promised Mr. S I'd crop his face out, so these may not be the most compositionally elegant photos of all time, but you can see the sweater alright.

Despite it taking me nearly a year to finish, it was actually a pretty quick knit. The heavy yarn/large needle combo makes for a very different knitting experience than what I'm generally accustomed to, since my preferred projects are fingering weight yarn on small needles. It was nice to work on something so different though.

We had some debate about whether or not he wanted me to change the collar since he usually only wears crew-neck sweaters, but he finally decided to just go with the original design and while it took a wear or two to get used to, he's been glad for the extra warmth the roll collar has provided in the single digit temps we've had the last week. It's not an extremely tight knit, but he says it's super warm, and all of the guys at work have been admiring it lately, which has made him like it even more. I think he's proven himself worthy of another hand knitted sweater or two in the future ;)

 I've really been wanting to get some sew-in tags made for myself, but keep hemming and hawing over what I want them to say/look like, or whether or not I should spend the money on something fairly silly. For now I stuck with a little ribbon tag in the back since the front and back of this sweater are pretty hard to tell apart.

I hope everyone had enjoyable holidays, and I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone in the blogosphere produces in the upcoming year! Have a great week, and to those of you in the more northern climbs, stay warm!