… for now.
I finished up the final chapters of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on Thursday morning, and worked the final stitches of Eris on Saturday.

I finally figured out what the wool reminds me of. You know the old 3-D glasses with one red and one blue lens? And do you remember what the pictures or movies looked like if you looked at them without the glasses on? That’s what this yarn looks like. Mostly blue wool, with red threads of alpaca heathered in. I think it’s the alpaca that gets up my nose and makes my eyes water.
I put her in my front loader with a little Tide, on the “Ultra Handwash” setting, and hoped that it would take some of the itch out of the wool. I think it did!
I set to work repairing my wooly horse. I used dowels from that big orange place, and the wood was quite soft so many of the pegs broke in their holes. I found the same size dowel in a harder wood and made myself some pegs and a few to spare. Good thing too, because while loading up Eris I broke another one of the soft pegs!

Thirty minutes later and with a bit of wrestling, I set her up on my wooly horse to dry. I tied up the front band along the convenient turning ridge that will be hiding the zipper that I plan to insert this week. It took me a couple of tries to line everything up. In retrospect, the heavy cotton yarn I used for basting wasn’t such a good idea – cotton absorbs water and shrinks when wet!
And the waist shaping made the wooly horse not quite work perfectly for blocking, but I love the way the sleeves blocked. All the decreases looked so neat and in rows along the inside edge of the sleeve. Ah well, live and learn.
Here’s a closeup of the collar. There’s something bloopy going on around the collar, but I think i might be because the sweater is people-shaped, and the wooly horse isn’t really.

I said off the needles for now because… the sleeves are too long! I tried it on before completing the first sleeve and it seemed to be right on target, but that was before I sewed the underarm seams. I wonder if maybe the way the stockinette curls at the underarms made the sleeve seem a little shorter that it really was. I do know that it was too much to block out, because I could tell they were too long before I even blocked. But I wanted to see the finished product before making a decision.

I think I’ll rip out the cuffs, and back about 8 rows (I’ll measure to be sure!) and then reknit the cuffs. I thought about just unravelling some stitches just above where I started the cuffs and then grafting them back on after removing the extra length, but there will be 2-4 more stitches to ease into, which is 4-8 rows of cuff. I’ve got the pattern memorized now anyway, so I don’t mind reknitting it. It will give me another chance to graft the cuff ends together better, too. I think instead of casting on, I’ll use a provisional cast-on instead. That might look even smoother in the end.
Then I’ll get busy attaching the zipper. I may need some help from my stich-n-bitch sewing gals on Wednesday, since that is certainly not one of my skillz. Finally, I have to stitch down the hem all around. The knitting curls back on itself beautifully, but I’ll stitch it down and steam it all into shape.
So, stay tuned for a really finished post soon. I can’t wait to wear it to work and show it off. I found another semi-knitter on my current project. She is also a HP fan, a bit of an HP-nerd actually. Way more HP-nerdy than I am. I’m more nerdy about other things though, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer which she also is a fan of. Nothing like establishing safe topics of conversation when you are on a project with someone you may have to argue with about work stuff! Sure comes in handy.
Meanwhile, while I was waiting for Eris to dry, I started on a new interim project: Lavender Fields socks.

It’s green, not lavender, I know. But the yarn came from the Lavender Fields in Valley Center, CA where I visited recently. It’s a sports weight yarn, which I haven’t used for socks before, so this will be a swatch at first. I have no idea how many stitches around it will need to be in sports weight. I’m using 3.00mm needles, which seems a good gauge.
I took out my Barbara Walker 3 last night to see about a lace pattern to use, but didn’t really find anything I wanted to use. I always pull out #3 first, because it’s charted. I hate lace without charts, it’s sooooo hard to follow.
In the car this morning (my huz was driving, I swear) I worked out something that may or may not already exist. Once I finish swatching I’ll share the pattern I come up with. I tried the turkish cast on that Meg Swansen wrote about in Vogue Knitting last year (or was it the year before?) and I like the way the toe looks, so I think I’ll stick with that.