Yay! Progress!!!

Raglan seam line

OK, finally I’ve moved past the decision making and past a few trouble spots and I can see the top of a sweater beginning to emerge out of the yarn.  I decided to go with green since my favorite shirt is green.  My eyes are hazel and I always think wearing green makes them look, well, greener.  And I don’t know why I didn’t go with nicer yarn except that I’m cheap and there was a time crunch and this really is a neat green.  The Vanna yarn is called Olive, but it’s darker than that with a little bit of gold/yellow in there.  I really hope those yellow tones are supposed to be good for my pale/pink complexion.  I can’t remember the rules on colors.  Anyway, I think it’s going to look a little, or a lot, like a military sweater.  I can’t decide whether I should encourage that or make some adjustments to be more girlish.  Of course the original picture flares out into a dress sort of thing… I haven’t thought that far for my design yet.

Oh, and I’m at the big crucial point where I put the sleeve stitches on spare yarn and just work the body for the next day or two so body decisions come first, then sleeve decisions.

Third time is the charm, right?

I certainly hope it’s true that I won’t have to start over again.  I’m on my third go at beginning this sweater and it’s starting to annoy me just a little.  I’ve made changes every time to my increase choice, I tried YO – they were ok but too holey, Elizabeth Zimmerman M1 – which is just a backwards loop or two and those were fine except my stitch marker wasn’t in the right place and I didn’t get them lined up right.  It didn’t look terrible… it didn’t look good either.  This third time I’ve added 1×1 ribbing at the edge and then I’m using increases that I don’t know the names for… work the stitch below the right one, then work the back of the stitch below the left one.  It makes a really, really nice increase line, I’ll post a picture in a little bit when I’m farther on the yoke.  I also adjusted my spacing for the increase points, I had too few stitches for the shoulders I think. 

Sometimes it’s so nice to just have a pattern and to follow it, but it’s pretty fun to make it up too.  =)