Knitting Progress - Verena Veronique

You may remember that before Christmas, I was beginning to knit the Veronique top from the Fall 2010 Verena knitting magazine. I'm still working on it, and I'm now finished with the main sweater pieces, and am working on the collar. It's done a little differently than any other sweater I've made. Usually you sew the pieces together, and then pick up the stitches for the collar and knit it in the round. Well, in this case, you do the front and back collar on the front and back before you stitch everything together. I can only think this must be because of the shaping of the collar since it has to fit down around the shoulders, and there's a lot of shaping to it as you knit. Anyway, it's different, and we shall see. Here is the front with the collar started.

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Since it's only taken me about 2 months to mostly finish the top, I'm fairly sure I can get the skirt done as well. I hope so anyway, although now that I've read the skirt pattern seriously, I see that it's done on much smaller needles than the top, so that means more stitches, and longer to do it. Oh well, I need a project, I guess. I do seem to be doing more knitting than sewing though, and I'd like to change that.

I did alter some older turtleneck tops the first of the month. Quick and easy, but nice to have them to wear. These were much too big, and not even ones I'd made, and I had been not wearing them unless I needed something for scooping snow, etc. I'm glad to be able to wear them 'for real' now, as they're great for layering under things, and the colors are ones I like (Surprise!) I just put them on and pinned in the sides, and under the arms, then took them off, marked on the inside, trued things up, stitched and cut off the excess. I didn't even use my serger, just a very narrow, longish zigzag. 0.5 x 3.0 is what my machine shows. Pfaff's IDF system really is a wonder on knits.