Today's Post Is Brought To You...

...by the verb "to frame".

I'll use it in a sentence.  "When taking pictures, I am terrible at framing."  Here's another.  "Usually when photographing an object, you want to frame the entire thing within the picture."

Yes, well, I've always been one to learn from my own experiences.  Another key word is "focus".  As in, "taking pictures that are in focus is a good thing."  Again, I'm learning as I go.

Anyway, thanks for all of your encouragement in the last post.  It helped me get motivated to work on my projects again, which is always a good thing.  I even finished my sweater!

See above about framing.  This was one of my better pictures.   Almost all of me is in it!  Who needs the top of my head anyway?  (What I really need is someone to hold the camera for me so I can stop with this camera timer nonsense.)

I am very happy with the way this sweater turned out.  It honestly took maybe a total of four hours to finish it up, which was fantastic.  I forgot how quickly things knit up when you're using worsted weight yarn and size 8 needles!  It's like magic.  Super fast magic.

I started this sweater 100 years ago (that's nine months ago in normal time, back in June) and actually knit most of it over the summer.  I had a sleeve cap and the seaming to finish by the time I went back to school in the fall (and a collar and pockets), but it took me a while to get back to this project.

Pattern: Delain, from Bouton d'Or Catalogue No. 83

Yarn: Berroco Ultra Alpaca, Tanzanite Mix colorway, 8 skeins

Needles: US size 8

Time:  June 2009 - March 2010

Mods.:  Not many.  I shorted the shawl collar and lengthened the body and sleeves, as I tend to do

The alpaca/wool blend of the yarn makes this sweater super warm, quite drapey, and comfortably heavy.  Sometimes I feel warmer when I can feel the weight of a sweater or a blanket on me.

This was my first time seaming sleeves into a sweater (other than a sweater I made for my brother, which had raglan sleeves, so I feel like it didn't really count.)  I'm quite happy with the way it turned out, and the sleeve and side seams are invisible, which I was really proud of.

All in all, I am calling this sweater a resounding success and I love it a whole lot.  The pockets on the front are tempting to stick my hands into, but they're really only about two inches deep, which makes them impractical for anything other than aesthetic purposes, but they're tempting nonetheless.

Thanks for the yarn, Deirdre!

One more down for Project Free-The-Needles!  Believe it or not, I'm really nearing the end of that one.  ...or so I'm telling myself.

The Fox River sends its love, to anyone who cares.  (Which I do.)

Ooh!  As an aside, I love walking along the river, which is my go-to spot for FO shoots.  Today was quite warm and a lot of Spring or migratory birds are arriving/passing through, so I enjoyed that.  I was under a tree filled with my favorite Cedar Waxwings, and I saw a Bald Eagle, a Red-Tailed Hawk, Cooper's Hawks (mating... they were being quite loud about it too), possibly an American Kestrel, and most exciting to me, I saw a gang of Buffleheads!  Exciting to me simply because I have a "Birds of Wisconsin" book and keep track of the date and location of when I see the birds in there, and in the four years I've lived in Wisconsin, I hadn't yet seen these.  I always love checking off another bird in that book.