Mariah, Finished at Last

So, first I knit the sweater. Then I spent a million beleaguered years knitting the hood, which I swear took as long as the sweater itself (no small feat given the long cables on the arms). Then I painstakingly plucked all my knit-in hairs out of it, an activity soon followed by knitting and applying pockets.

And then the zipper. I'm a zipper virgin, and I turned immediately to the realm of zipper tutorials (and I found a great one which I mysteriously can't find in my folders of links now). So... the long story: I carefully whipstitched the fronts together, whipstitched on the zipper, trimmed the excess, and carefully sewed it down with matching black thread. Only to find when I turned the thing inside out that I'd committed a crime against knitting.

Yes, I had on my hands one lumpy zipper. So I cut out most of the black thread with the intention of starting over, only to discover that the acrylic I'd used (if I haven't mentioned before that it's really cheap yarn... it's really chap yarn) didn't want to peaceably return the snippets of thread. Not only that, but it seemed to have problems with being sewn in general. So I spent a few hours salvaging things, leaving it very much not to my taste.

Sigh. But it's done, and seems well-appreciated. Just in time for summer.

Maybe I'll be able to get some "on the recipient" photos. The neckline's rather lost to view right now.