Yay me!

I actually finished knitting my first sweater! (Well, my second sweater, but we won't talk about the first one I attempted.) I finished sewing it together last night, and tried it on, and it actually fits and everything. The sleeves are a little long, but that's okay. I still have to crochet the neckline a bit to stabilize it, and then block the whole thing, which I'm hoping will shorten the sleeves up a bit as well. The first long seam I did was joining the two sides of one of the sleeves, and it was a horrible job- uneven and a bit bumpy. Then I redeemed myself with an absolutely beautiful, can't-tell-where-it-is side seam. When I went to do the second sleeve, I started at the top end instead of bottom (as was recommended by the pattern) and this one turned out waaaaay better. I sewed up the second side seam, and, taking a good long look at the finished thing, decided I'd take out the first sleeve seam and re-do it.

No no no no no! Disaster. I sewed up the sweater with the same kind of yarn as the knitting was done in, so I had no clue which bit of yarn was the seam and which was bits of sweater. After pulling at various bits and scrunching up the sleeve even worse, I wisely decided to quit while I was ahead. I pulled and stretched the bits of damaged yarn back into something resembling a sleeve and called it quits. So, some advice: sew up your work with another kind of yarn! You won't be able to see it if you've done it right, but you'll be able to pick it out if you haven't. Horrors.

Will post a picture when I've done the blocking. Despite slight sleeve problem, yay me!

Reading: Watching the English, by Kate Fox. It's a study of English behavior as documented by an honest-to-goodness anthropologist. Plus she's English, so she gets to take the piss out of her countrymen. Anyway, it's hilarious. The way she describes them, the English sound very much like me.