Another One Off My List

Notre Dame de Grace Sweater

Ah, it is SUCH a feeling of accomplishment when I finish another knitting project.  This one is my "Purple People" sweater.  It is knit with Cascade 220 Heather yarn from the Notre Dame de Grace pattern designed by Veronik Avery. 

Hmm, what's with these stitches?

The pattern is very easy to follow overall but I did run into a bit of a snag when I was working on the shawl collar.  I had followed the instructions and picked up some live stitches (a side at a time) to knit the two sides of the collar, which I then seamed together in the middle with a 3-needle bind-off.  But that left me with a group of stitches that were still live in the middle of the back.  Hmm, there didn't seem to be any mention of what to do with these.  The next instructions said to sew the collar to the body of the sweater.

Ravelry members always come through!

I had pretty much decided that I'd just bind off the stitches and then continue on with the directions but I thought I'd do a little more sleuthing.  I went up on Ravelry , which is just the best resource for knitters that I know of, and did a search on the pattern.  Ravelry has a great feature where you can search for a particular pattern and then, once you find it, you can click on that pattern and be taken to the description page where there are tabs that you can click on that show you all the projects knit from that pattern (along with the knitters' comments), blog posts about the pattern, and forum posts about it.  Sure enough, I wasn't the only one confused by the lack of instructions for those live stitches.  Others had wrestled with the same thing and come up with the answers.  Yes, the designer had meant for us to bind them off.  Yay!  Question answered.

A-binding we will go!

Once I had my marching orders, I made short work of binding off those stitches and then it was on to the next step.

Collar waiting to be attached

It was a simple matter to sew the collar to the top of the back sweater piece.  I already had my shoulder seams attached.  Once this was done, then I just had to tack the one placket behind the front flap and pick out a button.  There is no actual buttonhole.  You just sew the button through both layers of the front flaps.  There is still plenty of stretch to get your head through the opening.

Collar Close-up

Here is a closeup of the finished and attached collar before I sewed the button on.  I actually had a nice dark purple (but, of course) ceramic handmade button that worked perfectly for this sweater.

Here's the finished sweater.  It fits like a dream, too.  With the double seed stitch, it is nice and stretchy, which I love.  I HATE clingy sweaters.  I also love the ribbing across the shoulders, which gives it a visually-appealing contrast to all the seed stitch in the garment.  It has long sleeves, too, which is wonderful since I still can't see much sense in 3/4-length sleeves in a sweater.

A purple sweater for a purple person

And here it is......with perfect timing, too because I just got my new glasses which are purple.  I'm calling it my "Purple People" sweater, in an oblique homage to a comment I heard recently when someone referred to some folks as "purple people."  I never did find out what she meant but the feeling I got was that "purple people" are .....well, let's just say that they march to a different drumbeat.  That's fine by me.  I like purple, I wear it, and I'll gladly be counted a "purple person."    And with that, I'll just say that this is one sweater pattern that I shall definitely be using again.  Thanks, Ms. Avery and thanks, Ravelry for coming through for me yet again.