Green for St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day! In celebration, I'm wearing the Enormous Green Thing to work (with a baseball jersey underneath, because the Green Thing is itchy).

I am a leaf on the wind

There's a Ravelry group for Firefly/Serenity fans, and of course I belong to it. It's longest thread is "The real Firefly knitting challenge," a discussion about a particular Aran sweater worn by my favorite character in a couple episodes.

Ravelers KnottyLa and Maggs have done some amazing pioneering work to replicate the cables. I was dying to get started on this, especially now that the tweed pullover is done, so I grabbed yarn and needles and tried my hand at cable design.

This was some serious fun. I love cables. Mom taught me how to cross stitches for a cable before she taught me how to purl.

I've done lots of cables, but I'd never tried to replicate something from pictures, building the design stitch-by-stitch, row-by-row. I was pretty proud of myself, then Maggs put out her charts, and I realized that I'd made the cables too thin -- they should be three stitches wide instead of the two I used.

I decided it was time to jump in. I've got gauge (4 sts/in) and I've got a general idea where I'm going. So I cast-on and started the ribbing.

And because the outside looks like this today, I've got plenty of time to make some progress.

(Note: ordinarily, there would be a street in this picture).

Tweed Pullover

I finished the tweed pullover.

The bottom is a little wrinkly from the drive to where the photoshoot took place. Special thanks to JKLsemi for the pictures. (Portraits aren't really her thing; check out the pictures she took today that are more typical of her work).

I want to reblock the sweater. As expected, the ribbing pulled it in pretty snuggly, so I had to stretch it out, but now the bottom flairs more than I'd like. It's also just a tad too short. But I'm picking at it; friends have told me they think it's the best I've done so far.