Sweater Marathon

It looks like I am finally nearing completion of Dad's cable-til-you-puke sweater (also known as Inishmaan, by Alice Starmore).

Here are the pieces laid out for finishing: Here's what the inside seams look like: Here are close-ups of the back and front cables: And here it is with everything but the collar finished: ˇ

Comments

[abby]

omg that's gorgeous. i do prefer your name though.

[brina]

lovely! looks very warm and comfy. i enjoyed the name, too. i really need to get with it and try some cables. hmm...an excuse to go shopping - i don't have any cable needles. or do you recommend the needle-free cable method? thanks for providing a pic of it pre-finishing, too. sometimes i have trouble visualizing finished sweaters from pattern diagrams. working through a sweater project would probably help, but i'm not sure i'd ever actually finish one. i have a fear of ending up with two different sized sleeves or something. vests might be ok :)

[Rana]

Hey, thanks for the compliments. brina -- this one pretty much required a cable needle, since the larger cables are 2 stitches wide and the yarn I used liked to drop stitches when I wasn't looking. I was worried about the sleeves matching, too; the trick is to keep track of how many rows you do on the first one (since instructions like "continue until piece measures x inches" are too vague) and make sure you do the same on the other. I wish I'd kept better track of which row I'd started the cabling on; you can't see it easily, but the sleeves, while the same length, are slightly staggered pattern-wise if you lay them side by side. Finishing (stitching the seams and weaving in the ends) was a lot easier than I'd feared, though somewhat time-consuming.

Almost done! Yay.

[qB]

That's one wonderful sweater! Extreme cablephobia is entirely understandable, but the result is a joy to behold. I hope the recipient appreciates it.

[sappho]

completely terrific--I have an alice starmore book, but have never been brave enough to try to make one of the sweaters.
I do have a suggestion for sleeves--I do them both at once (if you use those long cable needles, the one's for afgans both will fit easily and you just have to keep the two balls of yarn from tangling) so that they are exactly alike in pattern and increases/decreases etc.

[Rana]

Good idea! I do something like that with socks; I alternate between them, switching when I finish a stage or complicated section. I don't usually use circulars (I only own one small one I bought for who knows what reason), but it wouldn't be hard to have two sets of straights for times like that. :)

The Starmore patterns are pretty easy to follow. The first one I did was simple (I don't remember the name of it -- I don't have the book at work, obviously! -- but it's the one with the fishermans' ribbing on the chest). It was my first real sweater from a pattern, and it turned out pretty well -- even the size was right -- despite using a different yarn than the one recommended and running short and having to substitute a different color for the end of the sleeves.

None of the actual techniques are that tricky technically, but the seamless sweater construction (especially gussets) can be confusing if you've never done them before. The main thing is to read the directions several times and tick off each step as you go. My copied version is a _mess_ of hash-marks, ticks, highlighting, notes to myself, etc. :)

The sweaters _are_ labor-intensive, though -- the fisherman's rib drove me farking nuts even though it was simple because it too _forever_ to make progress. I've never done a sweater by another designer, though, so I don't know if it's the pattern or just me.