Photos of the Month: Following a Year-Long Project

I could start this post with what actually is the photo of the month, but instead, I'm going to put that photo at the end, and trace the progress of a knitting project across almost the whole of 2017.

The project started in early February with a big ol' pile of yarn. Most of the yarn was purchased with a 2016 birthday gift certificate, so thanks are due to Nancy, Jan and Pat for their generous gift.

I cast on Jared Flood's pattern, Grettir, on February 10th and by early March, I had the start of two sleeves:

In mid-March, the sleeves had grown some.

A week later, the sleeves were finished and I cast on the body of the sweater.

Almost two months passed, mostly filled with knitting on other projects, but in mid-May, I finally reached the colorwork.

It turns out that I like colorwork a lot more than plain stockinette, so the yoke progressed quickly from this point, despite the addition of many more stitches when I joined the sleeves to the body.

And not long after the colorwork was finished, so was the whole sweater.

Except it wasn't...

Over two months passed, with no activity on this project, but finally, on September first, this happened:

Yep, that is me, cutting a steek. But first, my dear friend, Martha, reinforced the stitches on either side of the steek on her sewing machine. She also basted the edges of the five stitches added for the steek—that's the white yarn you see in the photo.

There was still more that needed to be done to turn the sweater into a cardigan, but first, I just had to try it on.

And it fit!

Next, I followed that white yarn that Martha put in on either side of the steek stitches and picked up stitches for the button band.

After getting the button band knitted, I practiced the two-row buttonhole technique—from Anne Hanson's excellent Craftsy class, Button Bands and Buttonholes—on a swatch, and I even sewed  buttons on that swatch. I opted for a slightly narrower button band than the one on my swatch, a great reason to swatch before knitting the real thing on your sweater. Here is a photo showing my swatch and two of my buttons. I purchased six of them three years ago at Danforth Pewter in Middlebury, Vermont. I've been waiting for just the perfect project to use them.

Finally, in November, I sewed on the last button, sewed ribbon onto the inside of the button bands to cover the steeked edges, and blocked my cardigan. I even took it with me on our annual Thanksgiving trip to the East Coast., and wore it several times, including on Thanksgiving, when Dave took this photo of me.

If you would like more details—and more photos—follow the link to my project page on Ravelry:  Colorwork Challenge Cardigan.