I started knitting Avast, for Jer, in August 2007. He is a picky, picky man when it comes to his clothing so it took a long time for him to decide on a pattern and I stressed the entire time if the final product was going to be to his liking. And it is.
It took me too long to knit this, I admit. I took breaks between pieces to knit other things, I had to wait for back ordered needles and I ran out of yarn at one point. Amazingly, I found more of the same dye lot in a store in a very different city from where I bought the orginal. So finally, on Saturday night after reading a number of tutorials on how to sew in a zipper, I sat down with my needle and thread and 2.5 hours later (so painfully long, there is a reason I don't sew) the sweater had a zipper, and I was done. There was very little seaming, the body was knit in one piece to the armpits, then the sleeves were added and the whole thing knit, doing raglan decreases, to the neck. The only seams were sleeves and hems, there was a lot of picking up and knitting to create the hems and I am now much better at it.
I used Jo Sharp Silkroad DK Tweed in Night, which I believe is now a discontinued colour. It's a beautiful yarn, but the cabled band that runs along the bottom of this sweater doesn't show up very well and that is a little disappointing. I didn't really alter the pattern much, I'm no designer, but I did add extra length everywhere for my husband and his Monkey arms. I'm really quite happy with the fit, it's a great sweater for the long and lean.
Now, back to stalking the mailbox for my RSC package.
