It was Christmas, and I finished...

this!

This is the pile of purple waste knitting, removed from Steven's sweater, and the red basting yarn, removed from Steven's sweater, and a lot of very long blue orts.  (An "ort" is a little piece of yarn left from sewing - for instance, when you do needlepoint, you collect little piles of wool orts.)  My orts for Steve's sweater are especially long, partly because I knitted one sleeve three times and the other, twice.  When I basted it together and had Steve try it on, the sleeves just weren't right.  He liked it so well that he wanted me to forget it and sew it up, but the sleeves were too narrow and I figured I better fix it.  The first time I re-knitted one of the sleeves, I dropped a stitch and didn't see it until later.  I re-re-knitted that out of sheer stubbornness, an exercise in patience, but it makes finishing all the sweeter.

The other reason I have such a large pile of orts after hiding the ends is that I have a longstanding habit of leaving long ends when I start and end each piece of knitting.  I use them for sewing later - I must avoid adding even more ends to hide!  Well, with all this re-, re-, re-knitting, I ended up working from several small balls of yarn and had lots of extra long ends (left long out of automatic habit) to hide.

So - how did the actual sweater turn out?  I think it's just great.  I am finally satisfied witth the order of knitting, the transition triangles, size and shaping, and I checked the fit by doing a basting and trying on.  That means I can finally start getting the patterns together.   This one has gone on forever! 

I don't get to have a picture of him wearing it yet.  He's lucky he went off to sleep over at a friend's apartment near U.T., or else I'd have probably dragged him semi-conscious out of bed to try it on.  He'll turn up later today and I'll get my pix.