And What Do We Do When We Finish a Sweater?

 First things first, I've finished my Birkinda sweater! Very Excite!

Sorry, I don't have a picture of me *in* the finished sweater excepting a quick bathroom selfie.  Zac is working and the light is bad when he gets home.  So, floor FO is what you get.  It does fit though, and that's the important bit.

It took me about a week longer than I expected it would to finish, and it has everything with the amazing news that I have.

We're moving back to California this year!  And... well, it's a cross-country move in the middle of a pandemic, and not anything we originally planned when we moved out to New England 10 years ago.  So, there's a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety and knitting went a little sideways for a week.

At this point, it's a waiting game.  There's hopefully good news coming this week that will enable us to move forward with all of our tentative plans, but until then, I am compiling lists of things I need to do, and slowly navigating them.

A few days ago, I decided to tackle one that was for some reason more pressing than the others.  My stash.

A lady doesn't usually talk about her stash, but here we are.

I actually sorted through and got rid of about half.  It fits into a tote now:

All ready to move.

And in my stash I found an old Sweater Quantity (SQ) that I got quite awhile ago.  I didn't really have any plans for it, I actually got it in a prize draw in a group I'm in.  Letting stash marinate is perfectly reasonable, but I looked at it sitting there, and I realized exactly what sweater it should become.

That is such an amazing moment, by the way, to have yarn sitting for awhile waiting for the perfect pattern, and then it hits you and you get the unreasonable urge to immediately cast on.

 And so I did.  Two days ago:

 

 And I worked on it relatively non-stop.

It's a luscious baby alpaca and acrylic blend from knit picks.  It's a soft blue and the alpaca gives the yarn a most beautiful halo, which you can't quite see in the pictures.

The coolest feature about the sweater is the raglan increases.  Normally, you might feature them subtly (as in the birkin sweater up-post) , but in this case it's done with lace, very intentionally. 

The sweater is written as a cropped oversized jumper with long sleeves, to be worn over dresses.  That isn't really my style, so I'm modifying it to be a little less oversized, a little longer in the body and probably 3/4 or 1/2 sleeves.

At this point, it's smooth stockinette, so I am free to watch interesting shows or read books or any number of things I was incapable of doing while knitting colorwork.

In other knitting, since I saw you last, I've finished the first of the DK bedsocks:

The first one fits rather nicely, and I'm planning to finish them in the next few weeks.

And finally I've been knitting every day on my Alice double-knit scarf and I'm through the section that I improvised:

I probably ought to have made the curtains look a bit more curtainy, but I like it.  It makes the waves of tears look a bit more daunting.

That's all that's left to talk about.  I'm enthused about my new sweater, and I'm enthused (if stressed) about the impending move.  I might be a little absent for a time in the coming months, but I'll keep you informed.

Thanks for reading! I plan to be back with some awesome FO pictures of my birkin sweater actually on me, and possibly the new one, although it really is not my intention to rush through it.  It just happens to be knitting itself.

Patterns:

Birkin- Caitlin Hunter

Felix Pullover- Amy Christoffers

Vanilla bed socks- moi

Wonderland Adventure scarf - Celia Cabodevilla