Yarnmule

The Nature Cable sweater is complete! It's certainly not my favorite FO ever, but it's not too bad. The armholes are a little wonky; I made the sweater a smidge tighter than I should have, so the batwing sleeve just causes a bulge. I think once the sweater grows (and it's cotton, so it will) it will be better. All the "waist shaping" was done during blocking, the body is really just a box. The best part, of course, is the cabling.

The cuff was added on after; I ran a bit short on the sleeve, so I made cuffs that matched the neckline. Another thing that's just slightly wonky.

Pattern: A freebie from elann.com, with drastic modifications, mostly because of my yarn choice. I couldn't match both stitch and row gauge. I decided that since this is knit side-to-side, row gauge was more important. This meant I added 8 extra stitches when I cast on for the body. I also made the neck opening about 2 inches narrower than called for. I reversed the cable direction past the neckline so it was symmetrical. The pattern called for a few rows of ribbing at each sleeve, but that was pretty unattractive in this yarn. Instead, I started knitting straight stockinette, and later added the cuffs.

Yarn & needles: Araucania Nature Cotton, 100% cotton, color # 27, 9 skeins. This is a naturally-dyed yarn, so it's it's a single variegated color; the end product looks almost tie dyed. I generally don't like knitting with cotton, but this stuff is lovely. It's very soft, almost fluffy at the thicker parts, so it has a lot of give. It looked extremely pebbly when I was knitting, but it relaxed a bit when i washed it. I used size 10 needles everywhere.

If I could do it over: Oh so many things would change. I grabbed this pattern and yarn at the last minute before a weekend trip. I didn't really think it through; just saw that the gauges might match and went for it. That was kind of a bad idea. The pattern is not something I would normally choose to knit; flat with lots of seaming, and nothing really interesting and challenging. Lots of stockinette with the occasional cable or increases. The yarn and the pattern don't really go together, and some of the resizing I had to do didn't work out tremendously well. Again, it may get better if it stretches. Basically it's not bad enough to frog, but not good enough to wear out of the house.