Hoodie has a hood!

I FINALLY finished the hood! Things I'm happy with about it include:

• The cables really do meet up and look continuous
• I used the 3-needle bind-off for the seaming and that worked nicely
  
• It seems to look good from the front and sides
  

Things I'm NOT happy about are:

• The grafting of the center stitches was a little iffy
• The hood over all seems a bit large

Anyway, as I told Jess, who has been an immense font of knowledge on all things related to sleeves, Rogue is not going to be a work of art. I think this pattern was a little beyond my knitting abilities, which makes it a great project for me to learn from. She'll look beautiful unless you stare at her seams, and I know I really need to work on the seaming things. I'm at peace with the flaws, though. And I'm really glad I have such good friends to help me through the rough patches, like the NYC Jess and the Granger Jess. And of course, my guru.

Now I need to tackle the sleeves, not in the round since they are set in. Yikes!

OK, one problem I have seriously been baffled by...I was weaving in a bunch of ends when I noticed a single stitch marker hiding at the very apex of the v-neck. I thought it was just an extra that had fallen off my needle when I was grafting/binding off. I went to pick it up and put it away. OMG, it was stuck to the sweater. I pulled. Nope, not coming off. Then I noticed -- It was ATTACHED to a single live stitch. Right there in the middle of the neckline. WTF??? I now remember doing this and wondering why I was doing it. I know I did it for a reason, trust the pattern, etc., but I couldn't find the place in the pattern that told me to do this ridiculous thing -- put one single stitch on a holder and leave it there until you're almost done with the whole sweater and about to rejoice and then you realize you have a live stitch in the middle of the neck and no way to make it "un-live" (what's the word for an un-live stitch?). No friggin' way I was going to frog this baby. I did what any short-cut loving imperfectionist (don't read this, Claudine) knitter would do and I use a short length of yarn to weave the live stitch into its rightful place among the other properly behaving stitches. Pray the ends don't come out, okay?

Last bit of news, I hung out with some knitting and spinning friends on Tuesday night and met an amazing spinner/dyer named Elizabeth (aka the Chocolate Princess). OMG, her stuff is so beautiful. The colors of her sock yarn were just lovely and I wanted to scoop them all up and roll around in them. Unfortunately I hate knitting socks. It's not really fair that there is so much wonderfuly colored sock-yarn out there that gets me all hot and bothered every time I see it and then lets me down when I realize what it is, i.e., not suitable for my knitting needs (I usually like yarn a little bit thicker than the sock variety). But, you sock knitters will love it. She dyes roving, too. And started an etsy store -- check it out!