No, I didn’t finish the Rios sweater. I’ve been told I’m a pretty fast knitter, but I’m not superhuman. What I did do, was finish my second attempt at a pattern I found on Ravelry called the $5 in Paris sweater.
(Welcome to my office. My selfie-taking device today was the webcam on my computer. I’m pretty sure I freaked out dude in the cube behind me a lot. Also…sorry about the photo quality. I just didn’t have time to use a real camera this morning)
The thing about this sweater (or things, rather) is that it was basically destined to be made by me. Yet somehow I still needed two tries to get it right. The pattern is designed for worsted weight acrylic yarn (which I think you‘ve learned by now basically describes my yarn stash), it’s intended to be knit with multiple colours, so it’s a good way to use up yarn that might not exist in full skeins (or sometimes you have to make this brown vest for someone like 4 times and the original pattern wanted the yarn held doubled (who doubles worsted weight yarn for a vest, IDK) so you have way more yarn than you needed, but not enough to actually make another sweater because it turns out it was a good thing you bought twice as much yarn because the vest was phenomenally longer than you thought it would be), it’s knit in the round (which, like, I don’t care. I’ll purl and seam all day long if I have to), so I basically just had to sit there and mindlessly knit and it’s REALLY fast, and best of all, it’s a raglan that’s knit top down, which means I can try it on as I knit. This last fact makes it even more comical that I managed to make it too big the first time I knit it. I don’t know what to tell you other than sometimes things get weird once I get my hands on them.
This is the first top down sweater I’ve ever made. It’s the first raglan sweater I’ve ever made. It’s the first sweater in the round I’ve ever made. But! I’m glad I learned all the skills because the sweater I’m now making with the Rios is a raglan sleeved cardigan that’s knit top down. So by some good knitting fortune I managed to do things in the correct order. Honestly, I was going to start the Rios project a few weeks ago, but one of the Ravellenic Games challenges during the Olympics this year was to reclaim some yarn, and I knew that if I was going to reclaim yarn from one of the many to-be-reknit project, this was going to be the fastest and the one that made me the least angry, so I frogged it. Then I had all this yarn sitting on my couch, and I thought I should knit it. It has the added benefit of being a good spring/fall sweater (I made it in ¾ sleeve, even though it’s supposed to be short sleeved. LBR about the weather where I live, okay. If it’s cold enough to wear an entirely acrylic sweater, it’s cold enough that you want sleeves.) So I worked it up (it’s fast) making a smaller size and making a point to do all the ribbing on smaller needles so it wasn’t so ginormously boaty around the neck and the sleeves and I tried it on like a billion times and now everything is wonderful and I now know all these great skills to make the nice cardigan out of expensive yarn actually fit me on the first damn try.
