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Five or six years ago I bought the perfect sweater. Hit me in all the right places, great color, etc. etc. I should have bought one in every color, but I didn't. Three years ago it started to unravel and I couldn't wear it anymore. I also couldn't bear to throw it out, so I shoved it in the bottom of my closet next to my bright orange sneakers and ten-hole Docs, all of which I pull out every once in a while and wistfully sigh over.

The October after we moved to Lewisburg we came up to Boston to do the whole Fall/pumpkin/caramel apple thing, and while we were staying with my parents, I asked my mom to show me how to knit. One successfully knitted scarf later, I pulled out my sweater and started to think about how to knit up a replica. Dream big, I always say.

This past Spring I took a knitter's math class at Mad About Ewe's. It was all about how to take your own measurements to create a custom sweater. It was interesting and it was fun, but it was also math, which means everything I learned leaked out my ears within fifteen minutes of having figured it out. Math is like that for me. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that one of my mom's biggest frustrations was helping me with math. Her way of learning is to understand why you get the answer you do, whereas my way has more to do with knowing how, and not caring so much about why. I think she forgave me the day I gave her a grandkid.

The other night I was looking for something to do, so I pulled out some yarn, knitted up a swatch, pulled out my worksheets from the Knitter's Math class, and went to work getting a pattern together.

I'm trying for something similar to "The Sweater", but since the yarn is thicker and softer, it won't be an exact copy. It will be a good practice run though. I'm having some guage issues, in that I'm getting the same guage with two different needle sizes (I don't know why this keeps happening to me, but it's really annoying). The guage weirdness means I'm not entirely sure how it's all going to come out width-wise.

So far I've frogged and started over three times:

1. I started out on size 7's but decided a few inches in to switch to size 8 circulars because of aforementioned guage discrepencies.
2. Discovered I'd twisted the stitches when I joined the round.
3. So far so good.

The yarn's not looking bedraggled at all. Really. I knit up another sweater a couple of years ago using the same yarn, but I was so annoyed with how it came out I stuffed it all in a bag and threw it back into my stash. In this picture you can see I'm knitting the body straight from the sleeve of the other sweater.

I repeat: the yarns not looking bedraggled at all. Really.

Finally, here's a closeup of the yarn. It's a light sage color with shiny bits running through. It's Schoeller Stahl Sunshine.