Snail Spirals

Finally, pictures of the finished gansey! I finished this Wednesday night, after knitting the collar three times. First I did it with neck gussets, but that made it too small, then I did it without the gussets, and that was fine, except that I didn't like the transition between the body and the collar. I frogged it again, and added a round of purl between the body stitches and the collar stitches, and that finally looked right to me. Luckily, the yarn held up really well to being frogged that much!



You may notice that there is a slight difference in the overall look of the patterning in these pictures, compared to the last picture I posted.



After I had finished the entire front and back and joined the shoulders with the straps, I realized that the proportions were all off. There was too much space above the underarm gusset for the armhole, and the area below the gussets looked stubby. So, I took a deep breath, frogged the shoulder straps and an inch and a half of each of the front and back, and snipped one of the stitches in the stockinette portion. I picked out one complete round of the stockinette, and put all the stitches back on the needles. I used the yarn unravelled from the tops of the front and back to knit another inch and a half of stockinette into the middle of the sweater. Then I spent two hours kitchenering the whole thing back together. Whew!

I am, however, very glad I spent the time to do this. The sweater looks better, it will fit better, and I won't have the problem of wonky proportions staring at me every time Emma wears the sweater. Best of all, you can't even tell where the kitchenered row is!



(It's at the red arrow...)

So the sweater is done, I like it, and I only had to use three skeins of yarn. I got both sleeves, the cuffs, and the collar from the third skein! There isn't an appreciable difference in the feel of the fabric between the body and the sleeves, despite using a slightly thinner yarn.

Here's what I have left over:



Ten yards! I was getting a little nervous toward the end of the second sleeve!


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A shameless plug- I put the last two skeins of this yarn up for sale in my store, if anyone's interested.