Meet Myrtle

At last, Myrtle is complete and she is just as pretty as I  hoped she would be!

Unfortunately, the weather's been much too hot to wear it out in public yet, but soon enough it'll be fall and I can start parading my creations again!

This particular pattern was written by Snowden Becker.  It's written more like a recipe than a pattern, though.  She charts out the "building blocks" you need for the sweater and outlines the basic structure, but the exact construction (and shoulder shaping) are up to you to execute.  The shoulder decreases were especially difficult working with such a complicated lace pattern.  This sweater is certainly not for the faint-hearted or the perfectionists out there.  I had to do a considerable amount of "fudging" to get the stitch counts right in the shoulders.

The only modifications I made were to add one pattern repeat to the waist section to make it longer and my gauge was MUCH too loose for the recommended needle size.  I had to go down two needle sizes.  If you do try this sweater, check your gauge first!!

I'm really glad I stuck with it, though--the results are excellent:

I like the back a lot better than I like the front.  Maybe this sweater would have been better as a pullover?  I still love it!

The yarn I used was Berroco Ultra alpaca fine.  You might recognize it from the Blue Mirasol Sweater (beware, Jericho pictures in that post).  I decided that since I really love this yarn--so airy and warm--and don't wear Blue Mirasol, since I made it much too short, that I would frog it and start over with that yarn.  I'm so glad I did.  Myrtle is definitely an improvement.

Here is a picture of the lace detail:

Pretty, no?

Next time: a pink edition of my stash-busting efforts--I'm down to 5.75 miles now!

Kitty update: everyone (except Walker and I) still has a fungus.  We think Arty's is starting to go away now, though and it's only a matter of time before Branwen's does, too.  We've started treating them with a lime sulfur solution that smells horribly like eggs.  I'll be really glad when everyone is fungus-free.  We think Arty feels bad about infecting Branwen, though.  We caught him trying to bathe her head last night, as if he were going to clean all the ringworm off it--too cute.  Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of that, but I do have some other photos just waiting to be uploaded that I'll have to share with you next time :)

Other than that, our little family is doing just fine.  Walker is plugging away at his accounting classes (just 2 more weeks!) and after that we'll start discussing what our next step is going to be--exciting and scary at the same time!

Cheers,

-Allie