As most of you probably know, I got the crazy idea to participate in NaKniSweMo (National Knit a Sweater Month) this year. Because you know, it's not like I have any other sweaters on the needles. My reasoning behind it actually made a little bit of sense though: I just started carrying a new base, called Smooth Sport, that I needed to work with. As an indie dyer, I feel it's really important to have actually worked with your yarns. How can I sell a customer on a yarn that I myself don't even know very well? I started carrying the base because I find I'm always wanting to knit sport-weight sweaters, so I might as well be able to use my own yarn for it.
I fell in love with the Rapunzel Sweater by Anne Podlesak the second I saw it. Put some good waist and bust shaping in a sweater and I'm probably sold. The side cables and gusset cables that accentuate an hourglass figure are what set it over the edge for me. Anne is a friend of mine and is letting me interview her next week for the podcast (she's also the dyer behind Wooly Wonka), so I thought it would be extra appropriate for me to be working on one of her designs.
I won't go into details about my failures in prep for NaKniSweMo (you can check out Episode 59 should you be interested), but ever since I've cast on, it's been mostly smooth sailing. I'm really in love with this project. I was a tiny bit nervous about using a variegated yarn for this (colorway is Bus Stop), but the construction of this yarn makes it absolutely perfect for projects benefiting from great stitch definition. I think you'll see in the photos that the cables still pop, even without a solid or semi-solid colorway.
The one thing I've noticed is that my left hand has started to ache a bit. I've been knitting way more than I normally do in a day. I have the sweater at my desk, and during the workday I'll try to put in a few stitches here and there. Wednesday evening I actually knitted for about an hour straight before heading over to my knitting group for several more hours of knitting, and I work up with a quite sore hand. Last night I went easy on the knitting and played a bit of BioShock (yes, I'm way behind on this franchise), which I had been neglecting since NaKniSweMo started. Today my hand felt good as new, so my new plan of attack is going to be to take little rest/stretching breaks in my longer bursts of knitting.
In Week 2 I'm hoping to finish the body of the sweater, but I'm not sure about that happening. Right now I am four inches from the armholes, so it's definitely possible! How great would it be to finish this before the end of the month? Then I can get back to my knitting projects being all over the place.
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