Hourglass Sweater

For the past couple of weeks, I have been working on the Hourglass Sweater from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts, a great resource for fun, fairly quick patterns. I have really been wanting a pullover sweater that can be worn with jeans, of three-season weight, not too fancy, but not too baggy, either- a weekend errands and coffee kind of sweater. I bought the yarn in Madrid last May, loving the tweedy texture and colors (a marine blue with various shades of other blues). It's Katia brand, mostly silk with some wool. I thought I would make Celtic, a zip cardigan from Rowan's latest magazine, but the gauge was way too off.

Than I found this pattern- it was exactly what I wanted, so I got to work. It's knit in the round on #7 needles and you start at the bottom and work up, attaching the sleeves as you go. I have the first one done and attached, and here is sleeve #2. The pattern called for #7 12" circ needles, but I couldn't find them that small, so I went with dpns. I just realized that I have been knitting the sleeve with #6s by mistake, but they don't look different, so I am not going to worry about it. Maybe I'm doing the body in sixes, too- hmmmm.... oh well. It looks like it's going to be fine, so no worries. If you look closely, you'll notice that there's a turning edge, so I'll sew that and have a nice even hem.

I also wanted to show you my new knitting basket that I got for the living room. My other one doesn't have a lid, so Mobi would get into it and it had to be moved upstairs. Since then, I have had yarn and needles strewn all over the coffee table and couch after a knitting/viewing session. I got this from a Ten Thousand Villages sale they had here at WSU. Isn't it nice? It was made by hand in Bangledesh.