Leaves In Relief Finished!

Well, here is my Leaves In Relief blocked and finished (almost). I am in love. It came out very nice and was so much fun to make. I have been searching blogs to find someone else making this sweater and have been unable to find someone. There is a lot of talk about the charts being needlessly complicated and about preferring different sleeves. If you are intimidated by this pattern, I would say go for it. It was not nearly as difficult to follow as I imagined. By the time you finish the first repeat on the sleeves you know the chart symbols pretty well and you can just buzz along.

Other impressions:

1. There were many times that I was tempted to alter some part of this pattern. I thought that this or that might look better another way. I always followed the pattern and realized that it always looked better as written.

2. On the model I thought that the neck looked too large and that the sweater seemed too tight for my rather lumpy figure. The neck was fine. Initially when I tried on the sweater it did look tight and lumpy but blocking has cured that.

3. The sleeves are written to be 20 inches long for everyone. I like my sleeves a little long so I lengthened the cuffs. Big mistake, now they are too long. I actually took apart the cast-on on one sleeve and decreased the length and bound it off again. In Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting she explained that early Aran sweaters had the cuffs knit in the round so that it they ripped they could easily be unraveled and reknit. Apparently this only works well if your sweater is knit from shoulder down. This evening I will be tackling the other cuff.

4. Initially I thought that I did not like the leaf sleeves. Since making them they have really grown on me. I have been thinking of other things that I could make with this pattern: hats, mittens, socks. I also love the way the leaves are repeated in the tree pattern.

5. The tree on this sweater was so much fun to knit. (Did I mention this before?) I would definitely recommend this sweater. The one problem that I did have reading this pattern I e-mailed the designer about and she clarified it for me. For that I take that help is available which should make the pattern a bit less daunting.

What now? As luck should have it I received my order of Nature Spun in Pink Please for my Fulmar sweater. I am also still plugging along on Donegal. Now I will be working on two Alice Starmore's at one time. I may regret this.

In review:

Pattern: Leaves In Relief from Knitty.com
Yarn: Nature Spun in silver sage from Stitches, Plainfield, MI (5 1/4 skeins)
Needles: size 7

Related Links:
The Beginning
First Sleeve
Sleeves
Roots
Progressing
Growing
Blocking