Parade of Finished Objects Part 2: Livingstone

Here it is, the moment you’ve all been waiting for:

yes, my shirt has a cowl neck...

This is Livingstone, born from a sudden sweater impulse and much anxiety over yarn amounts. Seriously, I think I wavered over weather I had enough yarn for three or four posts. It was getting ridiculous. Of course, it was only after I finished that I remembered that I wasn’t using two whole skeins of Cascade Eco like I thought I was; I had used some of the second skein to knit a border on a sweater for my mother…woops. I ended up using literally all of my yarn- I was snipping extra long ends to finish making the last I-cord for the button loops.

the back

Still, I would say that this sweater was definitely a success. Due to the above-stated small amount of yarn, I had to cut several rows out of the deep shawl collar, but I think it looks just fine. And it certainly is as comfy as it looks. The buttons were cheap-o ones from Hancock Fabric, but I think they’re simple enough to fit the overall look of the sweater. And I’m the one who matters

the front, lying flat

The intense cabling looks stunning, and I’m really proud of myself for sticking with the pattern. Especially after I realized that I had mis-crossed the FIRST ROW of cables on the back after knitting another inch. I dropped stitches and re-crossed, and it really, really looks perfect.

oh god, the back got complicated...but I can't see any mistakes on the finished object!

The biggest problems I had with the sweater probably have more to do with the platform it was published on than the actual pattern. It was from the last issue of Interweave Knits Magazine (Winter 2011), and I think the act of squeezing the pattern into the format created some problems. The charts were quite small, and I wish that I had the forsight to scan them in and blow them up so that I wasn’t constantly looking up and squinting at the chart. There were a couple of times were it was a little vague, but I muddled through. Finally, the design schematic was, to me, kind of hard to understand. I talked about all of these issues in A LOT of detail in past posts, though, so I don’t want to dwell on them here.