Star light, star bright

Stars & stripes 1
Originally uploaded by annmcclure2000

It is amazing what you can accomplish when you work on one project at a time. You might even finish sweaters!
Well, this one is almost finished, as you might be able to tell. All the knitting is done, down to the collar, and the shoulder seams are done (grafted?).
I wanted to do a three needle bind off on the shoulders, but I misread the directions for the front and couldn't figure out where the stitches to match the back were. I figured I'd wait and find them during the knitting, but when I was doing the intarsia star I needed all the ends I could get. So I went back and cast off the back shoulders according to the pattern in order to free the ball. And once I did that I had to cast off the front.
In the end, it was only 16 sts to sew/graft, so it wasn't too bad. And they actually look quite nice, if I do say so myself.

It always amazes me how a sweater can go from looking like that to something you'd actually want to wear. Really, what I find shocking is that the sleeves actually work out. Sure you can see it when it's all folded up properly the way it is going to end up, but when the pieces are all laid out flat to be pinned and seamed, yeah I find myself thinking "that sleeve is never going to fit in there." But, of course, it does. Which I'll be tackling this week. Boy, talk about cutting into your knitting time. Seaming is a black hole of time.

Although I've finished the sweater, I haven't been totally faithful to it recently, but that's a story for another day. It's 10 pm now. Time for bed.