#dil4

[charliecraftsthings]

My partner's sweater is finally complete! All the little yarn ends woven in, and the garment's been washed, tagged, and shrunk to fit!

Did I mention my partner bought me that sweater blocker for my birthday last year? It's a bit of a mutual present: it's adjustable so I can block me-sized sweaters, and him-sized sweaters.

We are different sizes.

[charliecraftsthings]

Finally finished crocheting my partner's sweater!

This is about 2.2 km of yarn, crocheted over about 2 years. It weighs almost 1.5 lbs. I had to restart it from the very beginning in Fall 2023, which is about 9 months of crocheting from then til now. So now that I have the sizing and stuff, future sweaters should take less trial-and-error (right? 😅)

The next part is weaving in all the loose ends, which I am not looking forward to.

But I am already planning his next sweater 😆

[charliecraftsthings]

Progress on my partner's sweater, May 2024. Sleeves are finally complete!

After crocheting one sleeve to fit my partner, I had a heck of a time trying to duplicate my work on the second sleeve. Mis-counted stitches, differing stitch tension, losing count of decreases… Finally I just counted the total rows and the final stitch count before the ribbing, and winged it. But I think they are quite close!

With the sleeves and gusseting complete, now all that remains is the boring part! 😄

[charliecraftsthings]

Progress on my partner's sweater, Feb 2024.

The sleeves are nearly done.

I enjoying working sleeves first, especially when shaping/sizing for someone else! I can get all the fiddly measuring done, before moving onto the extremely repetitive body.

[jazzeria]

Sometimes when I need my partner to try on the sweater I'm making for him, I'll treat the sweater like a puppet and talk to him in a puppet voice. Sometimes it's cute, and sometimes it's a monster.

Me, holding the sweater body open like a mouth: "GET IN ME! OM NOM NOM!"

[charliecraftsthings]

Partner Sweater progress, January 2024.

I think I've finally got the armpits and chest to fit right. The hard part (fitting) is done; now for the long and mundane part (make the rest of the sweater).

PS: How noticeable is the dark band on the right (photo left) sleeve? I'm a little worried it's too noticeable.

[charliecraftsthings]

I recently frogged my partner's sweater all the way back to the beginning so I could fix some issues.

Here's how it looked last year:

My first ball of yarn came from a noticeably darker dye lot than the rest of the yarn. It may not look very noticeable in the photo, but in meatspace, I really didn't like how it looked.

I tried alternating skeins, but it never looked good enough.

I also realised the collar ribbing was too wide, so I started over from the very beginning. This time, I decided all ribbing would be in the darker skein.

Boy is it demoralising to start a project (especially an extra large sweater for your partner) all the way to the beginning. I actually procrastinated on this decision for a very long time (several months) out of avoidance.

But I think it looks much better this way. And really, for something like this, it's important that I make something I can take pride in, while also making sure I'm still enjoying the process.

[charliecraftsthings]

I’m nearly finished my Done In Love pullover #3, which, by the law of the Yarn Hydra, means I can start like five more projects!  

One of those projects is a full-sized sweater for my partner (again: Done In Love pullover), which will be a significant undertaking (he wears an XL Tall).  So I’ll be spending a lot more time and brainpower swatching and calculating (which will hopefully reduce the amount of frogging!).   

Yarn: Hawthorne Tonal Hand Painted in “Astoria”, which is a steely blue-grey (my partner’s favourite colour is a sort of stormy grey-blue).