Xmas Sweaters Finished

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I finally got both sweaters completely finished and photographed. It's awfully nice to see them lying there, all done. I hardly know what to do with myself now that I don't have one of them to pick up and work on in every spare moment.

They're both made with Bendigo Woolen Mill's Rustic yarn. It's 100% wool, and very nice to work with. Especially if you hate finishing, as it comes in 200g balls, and so there are many fewer ends to weave in, especially if you splice as you go along, as I do.

The Red Tweed sweater is a Child's Size 9/10, and the Midnight Tweed is a Men's XL. The patterns is Drops 59-6

I made one mistake which I'm glad I made. This may sound strange, but I'll explain. The patterns on the front and back of both sweaters are exactly the same, and the small box pattern at the sides has a varying number of stitches which makes the size difference. The sleeves however are a different matter. The adult sweater has a narrower version of the center cable panel flanked by the horseshoe cables, and the rest in the box pattern, as on the front. The child's version doesn't have room for all that when you begin the main sleeve stitches after the cuff. I read and reread the pattern, and finally did what (I thought) it called for. The horseshoe cable pattern with the rest in the box pattern. It worked out beautifully, and I liked the sleeve extensions even better than the adult version where it narrows to go behind the back neck, since it has a little textural pattern to it, and the adult's, which uses the main cable pattern there, doesn't. When I began the second child's sleeve, I realized I had misread the instructions, and it was supposed to be the narrowed main cable pattern without the horseshoe cables. Well, I certainly wasn't going to rip out a whole beautiful sleeve just because of that, and I really like mine better anyway.

Here's my version of the sleeve. You can see the other version below.

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One thing that's tricky on this pattern is ending the sleeve extensions at the correct point. I ended up ripping back a few rows on some, and adding a few rows on others to make the graft come out exactly in the center back.

Here's a close-up of the Shoulder/Sleeve/Body seam. You can also see the edge of the turtleneck which was picked up after the rest of the seaming was all done.

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I had a little trouble doing the collar, since my shoulder began hurting when I started knitting around on it. A couple years ago, I had the same kind of pain which began when I picked up and knitted a similar collar on a sweater for me, which turned out to be rotator cuff injury. That sweater was much lighter than this one, and I tried to think of some way to change my method enough to make my shoulder feel better. I decided to change to double-pointed needles from a circular, and that seemed to help a lot. I think shoving the stitches along while lifting and turning the sweater was the problem. With the double-points, you knit off one needle, stop and turn, then begin again. It doesn't seem like a big deal, but it definitely made a lot of difference.