Bad News and Good News

Well, the bad news is that with all the rain yesterday and possibly with some help from Finn, the ribbed raglan isn't dry yet so I don't have pics of it being worn. I will get those over the weekend and on Monday I'll blog them. How is Finn helping with the drying of the sweater? Well, this is the first sweater that I've ever tried to dry in a Finn Accessible Location in our house. He's really good with my knitting and despite the occasional attempted stealth roll in raw fleece and the rubbing against all new wool and yarns that enter the house, I thought he could probably handle a drying sweater. So I spread the sweater out on a towel in our bedroom under the ceiling fan, hoping to help it dry. Then I put away the extra yarn and the book and my notes from the knitting and checked on the sweater one more time to make sure I had it arranged right - except that I couldn't find the sweater. In the place where the sweater had been, there was Finn - laying on his back, all four feet in the air with an expression of pure doggy bliss on his face. Periodically he'd give a little full body wiggle and sigh contentedly. Once I moved Finn, I found the sweater, kind of blond and fuzzy and definitely not the way I had left it. After re fixing the sweater, pulling off as much fuzz as I could, and telling Finn that he wasn't supposed to be laying on it, I took Finn downstairs and kept an eye on him. Clearly Finn isn't ready to be allowed to help sweaters to dry yet.

The good news is this:

Yes, I am past the hem of the red cardi. (I know, it's photographing as more of a red orange but it's really not - red is just one of the hardest colors to photograph correctly for some reason.) I knit the hem 3 cm long (the pattern is from a German yarn company I think, it seemed right to measure in metric for this one) and I think it's going to work nicely. There was a comment yesterday about using seed stitch on the lower edge instead of ribbing or possibly garter stitch. Both of those would help to stop the rolling, but neither would have been heavier than ribbing which is why I chose to use a hem - double thickness = more weight to hold down the crazy curly edge.

By the way, if you're in Ravelry, this pattern is listed in there and you can see how other people have done it. There is a gorgeous brown version that used KnitPicks Andean Treasure. It's a 100% alpaca yarn like the yarn the sweater was originally designed for and there is no apparent rolling of the lower edge going on. I just thought I'd mention that in case some of you really like the design but don't want to fool around with a hem or crazy curling lower edges. If I like this sweater half as much as I think I will, I might go back and do it again as it was written in this yarn - I love the Lilac Heather and Wild Rose Heather colors. Decisions, decisions.