My Road to Golden

So here it is: my almost finished first fair isle sweater.

(This photo is 365 Day 32)

The armpits are now grafted together (which I did loosely as many knitters on Ravelry did so it wouldn’t be too tight.) I’m going to undo the top round of the neck and use a crochet chain stitch to bind off like one raveler suggested or else pull those stitches tight with all my might because I’m not wearing another floppy necked sweater. Who am I kidding? Winter’s about over, I’m probably not going to be wearing this sweater until next year anyway.

My only real problem was that I ran out of the olive green just before the end and had to cut ends off of the long strands hanging at the beginning of some rounds and (ulp!) tied them together for the last round. I know that is so tacky, but I’m not waiting a week or so for one round of green. I think it will work.

This is what I did different than the Lisa Shroyer pattern (Ha, I just realized I had my hair pulled into Princess Lea buns like the girl in the pattern):

– I used size 5 needles instead of 7’s because I guess I knit loose, and I didn’t have anything smaller to use on the sleeves. I can see where they puff out a bit when I switch from fair isle to the main color, but I think blocking will smooth that out.

-A few inches into this, I decided to run the colors I wasn’t using up along the body, twisting them with the working colors every few rows. This looks messy, but it is better than tripling the amount of finishing I have to do. Does this mess of yarn ends not look like the work of the Devil?

…Wait I made this!

-I also did decreases on every knit round of the garter stitch neckline and added two rounds, binding off tightly, but not tight enough.

Okay, so the question now is: what dvds will I watch/listen to while I weave in these ends?