Monday, May 07, 2007

That's Done! What a Relief!

A couple of years ago, maybe even several years ago, my friend Jim asked me to knit him a sweater. I've mentioned this before. He ordered a couple cones of Bartlett Yarns Fisherman Sport wt. and I launched in with the expectation of finishing in a week or so.

A week? you say. Well, yes, because I intended to whip this thing out on my knitting machine and that seaming would be the hardest, slowest part.

Take a good look:

It looks pretty basic, right. Downright boring, right?

It's a double-sided fisherman's rib, a.k.a. a brioche stitch. Knitting this sucker by hand would have been slow and tedious. In theory, knitting it on the machine should have been a pretty speedy proposition: about 12 hours of actual labor. Ah, but the machine and I had to learn to get along.


Eventually, we did.

I just this evening did the last bit of finishing: darned in the last few ends and stitched up the last few seams.

I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. I hope Jim will be, too. I hope it'll fit him. He's out of town this week, so I won't find out until the weekend. I'll try to get a pic of it on him.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks great, nice and cozy! Congrats on finishing it!

Zonda said...

Wow! That is really nice! Looks very warm and comfy! Great job!

YarnThrower said...

Wow! It looks perfect!

Cindy G said...

I guess "wow!" has already been used, but, you know... It really looks great. Worth all the struggles, and I hope he just loves it.

Terby said...

Hey look at that! It's really done. You must be thrilled to have that completed. It's a very nice looking sweater. I wouldn't call it boring - it's a guy sweater!

Lynn said...

Why is it that basic, boring-to-knit sweaters are the ones that actully get worn? I'm not just talking about sweaters for men here.

That is a great sweater and I can completely understand why you had to wrestle the knitting machine into submission to make it - that's a lot of knitting!

Molly Bee said...

I love it! Love the stitch!

Emily said...

I always used to imagine machine knitting to be like magic, producing sweaters in an instant with no work. Know that I know better i am both more impressed and less inclined to go buy my own machine... it looks awesome.

Mag said...

It looks really good, very professionally done. Your friend is going to be pleased!

Marina said...

Thanks! I've wondered what Brioche stitch was but was too lazy to find out.

It looks great!

Cindy G said...

Hey Elizabeth, I am interested in the last Sat. group. But I've lost the info on where and how to get there....