Lace Leaf Pullover

Here I am in my latest knitted ware, Teva Durham's Lace Leaf Pullover. The pattern can be found in her book Loop D Loop and also in the Summer 2005 issue of Interweave Knits. I used KnitPicks Sierra in the color Leaf with size 11 needles. I had some hesitations about knitting up a chuncky sweater, but it came out better than I thought. I admit that I am horrible with knitting a swatch before my projects, but this time I did it. However, even with knitting two swatches, it still came out larger than I wanted it to be, and blocking it didn't make it small enough. So I bravely threw it in the dryer while still damp and shrank it a bit. So now the stitches aren't as pronounced since it, uh, felted a little. But it fits a lot better. I'm currently using a vintage rhinestone brooch from my aunt as the fastener as I didn't sew the button on yet. I probably will keep the button off so that I can accessorize this better and just use my collections of brooches and pins for this.

This sweater took about three days to knit and it is incredibly warm. The only modification I made to the pattern (aside from using a different yarn) is that I didn't bind off the stitches on the top half so when it came time to graft the top and the bottom pieces together, there wasn't any bulk. Worked out well.