Sweater at Last

I made Kevin take a quick picture of the finished seamless hybrid yesterday (I nearly said "new" but since finishing it I've worn it at least once a weekend and some weeks during the week too, so calling it new feels funny). And here it is:



I'm mostly happy with it. I do think I should have made it slightly longer (but am too lazy to knit a new lower edge then graft it on... ), so I'm thinking about knitting a lower hem in a different but coordinating color and sewing it to the bottom--that way, the ribs wouldn't need to match. That would also have the benefit of adding a little weight around the bottom--right now, the length problem is compounded because the sweater is so light and floaty that it seems shorter than it is.

On the other hand, it's kind of pill-y (not surprising, since I knit it with yarn meant for lacy shawls, not sweaters). I can't tell if it's going to keep pilling till it vanishes in a little puff of fuzz, or if it's going to reach some kind of pill equilibrium and be OK for years (my first hourglass sweater, in Tahki Donegal Tweed, pilled like mad then stopped, maybe it's like that?). If it's going to vanish in a puff of fuzz, then I don't want to sink more yarn and knitting time at it... but on the other hand if it's about to reach pill equilibrium and last forever, I want it to be perfect.

I also should have remembered (or acted on, because I actually did remember but did nothing) that Elizabeth Zimmerman's percentage sweaters (where you figure out how many stitches you need for the body, then the rest of the directions are given as a percentage of that number) produce more tightly fitting sleeves than most people prefer these days. Other people adjust for this by starting the sleeves with a higher percentage of the body stitches that she suggests, but I didn't, so the body is looser than the sleeves. (Although now that I look at the picture, I think the sleeves have relaxed and fit just fine.)

In other news, Kevin and I went for a nice run in Look Park in Northampton on Saturday, after his class. Look Park is one of the many (many, many, many) benefits of nearly everywhere I've lived before now that I hardly took advantage of because I hardly exercised outside (in college I did step classes and stair-climbed, mostly. Hard to believe, given how much I hate stairs.).

There was a cyclocross race going on, which we thought we'd be able to watch--but the park was too woodsy for us to see the race from a distance, and the race course filled the roads/paths it was on, so we couldn't run next to the course. Plus I hate to run right next to bike races--even through I know I'm not going to leap in on to the course, there's no way for the cyclists to know that I won't.

The instructor of the road bike workshop we went to in May was very pro-cyclocross. He tried to convince us we should try it--but I think he may have misunderstood my personality (and inherent klutziness). Long bike rides: yes; courses "featuring pavement, wooded trails, grass, steep hills and obstacles requiring the rider to quickly dismount, carry the bike whilst navigating the obstruction and remount in one motion" (according to the Wikipedia entry): no.

But I've been lazy about erging, which makes me feel like I'm being lazy overall. My excuse is that each of the 6 ergs in the regular (non-crew) area of the gym has at least 1 broken component, and it's a pain to use them. If the computer works, the foot stretchers are missing one or both straps. If the straps are there, the computer regularly hallucinates and displays stroke ratings (# of strokes per minute) that cannot possibly be right. And if both the straps and computer are in working order, the chain and wheel (which provide resistance in the absence of actual water) interact as though filled with gravel.

As a result, I cannot wait for December, when winter training starts and we'll get to use the crew room's ergs. And the tanks. In the mean time, I've been running, and staring at rowing vocab on Wikipedia, because there's no Ravelry for rowers. I was transfixed by this picture of an oarlock the other day. Pathetic!