Winter Obsession, part 3

I finally finished my deep V-necked raglan version of St Brigid, and sewed in the last end .I'm not sure I like it yet; I'll have to wash and block to see how it really looks, but for now all the parts are connected and the sweater is warm and interesting. It ended up more like a tunic, and is very comfortable and warm on this frigid day, but I still wish I had started it from the top down so I would have more control over the length and such. As it was, I had to re-do the yoke once because it wasn't coming together at the correct rate of decrease( it had to be 16 sts per every other row instead of the usual 8), so after 300 yards of knitting from the armholes up, it had to be frogged and re-done. In retrospect I probably shouldn't have made the V so deep, but it was difficult to judge how it would fall without the yoke being finished. I am tempted to rip it back and re-do it again, but in fact I am ready for it to be done! Which of course means I have to start something new...oh, dear!

Yarn:Nashua Handknits Superwash 7.5 skeins ( 218yds per skein), size 6 needles, color:24

Winter Obsession part 2

So here are the fruits of the last few weeks of knitting pleasure. I have had to graph out the project nearly line by line, as I decided it might be possible to make this into a raglan V necked design, which pleased my sense of geometry and hopefully will fit me. All the possibilities of set- in sleeves seemed to do inelegant things to the cables, and while I will probably attempt top- down set- in sleeves in one piece in future, these cables seemed to want to merge in diagonal ways. And to make it less warm to wear, a V neck seemed like a good idea at the time.
So I began to make the braid cable emerge in the front while I decreased in the center cable panel. I'm in the middle of the 5th repeat , and took advantage of the end of this ball of yarn to work on a sleeve. I decided to add 2 stitches every 4 rows until I had a whole cable on either side of the center "seam" and then knit straight to the armpit. 5 cable repeats gives me the arm length measurement I need, so I am pleased. It is kind of scary, though , to work bottom up, as I have become so used to the control and predictability of working top down and being able to try it on as I go. Ah well, live and learn! I am enjoying this quite a bit, watching the graphs turn into stitches and seeing my measurement predictions turn out. As this is a superwash wool, it may turn out bigger than it is as knitted, after I block it, which will be fine, as it seems to be a bit smaller than I predicted from the swatch. In my eagerness to get going of course I didn't wash the swatch! Live dangerously! Luckily I don't have to please anyone except myself, so it is all good. And I can always rip and re-knit. Or find some unsuspecting child to give it to. Or put it in the Museum of Knitting Experiments.