Sucking It Up...Again

Well, I finished the Noro sweater...and I pretty much followed EZ's instructions this time, with a few extra short rows in the shoulders, and, well. It worked. A lot better. Consider humble pie eaten.

Here it is:



I'm rather pleased with it. The Kureyon doesn't seem itchy to me, but I do have a pretty high itch-tolerance and I rinsed it with some American Cream conditioner from Lush.

So, because I have discovered I feel somewhat adrift without a sweater on the needles, I immediately started plotting the next project. Remember the yarn from New Lanark?



That's the scene on my dining table while I plot out a Norwegian-style sweater of my own design. Here's a snippet:



See the ljus? Or lice, if you prefer? Nice aren't they? Yeah, well. I've been using EZ's EPS for this, which gave me a Key Number of 240 (6sts/in / 40" chest) so a sleeve of 60 to start, increase to about 108-ish. Firstly, try increasing whilst keeping the lice straight. Aargh. It's kicking my head. In fact, not long after that photo was snapped, I ripped back (again) to the first row of lice because I wasn't happy with how the increases were going. I continued the colour patterns for a bit instead:



Nice, huh? Now, I was wanting a hemmed sleeve. Not done one before but I think they look nice and neat. On this photo I've folded the hem under so you get an idea of what the finished item would look like. There's just a couple of snags. One, working the increases whilst working patterns means I'm having to pick different patterns every few rounds to fit into the number of stitches...which is slow, but kinda fun. Hence the graph paper and Fair Isle books. The other snag is a bit more of an issue though. I have really skinny wrists and forearms. This sleeve is enormous. I mean, it's totally ruttin' HUGE. And it's getting bigger. I have a horrid feeling this sweater is going to DROWN me, especially with the drop-shoulders of a typical Norwegian sweater. I wanted it to be fairly loose-fitting, a few inches of ease for winter layering, but, well. Huge. I considered ripping off the hem and working ribbing instead, but I really want hems. At the moment it's coming out more suitable for a burly bloke with log-like wrists. You know, the sort who model Rolexes. On my scrawny lil' wrists it looks RIDICULOUS to be honest. I think I need to have a rethink on this...darn it. I hate it when my knitting kicks my arse.

~*~