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... totally awesome.

Materials: 8 skeins Blue Sky Alpaca & Silk in I34, Iron. Sizes 2 & 3 circs & DPNs. Pattern: the Somewhat Cowl.

Time: Eight months of very, very intermittent knitting. (See needle size, above.)

Cost: None! Because there is seriously no better way of spending your birthday money than on some great yarn.

I'd been eyeing Knit & Tonic's Somewhat Cowl for some time after I started seeing them pop up on various blogs online. No matter how great a pattern might seem to be, I wait for the true test: photos from field knitters submitted to the knitting forums on Craftster. I liked the Somewhat Cowls that I saw -- it seemed like a good pattern for someone like me, who visually gains 10 pounds in sweaters without waist shaping. I'm also a sucker for a cowl neck. All signs looked good, except for my search for a cheaper yarn.

I knew that the yarn for this sweater -- for me, anyway -- ought to be something other than standard-issue utilitarian wool, as it a) needs to drape nicely and b) feel soft soft soft against the skin (again: close-fitting!). Enter some birthday money from my parents. After some deliberation, I figured that expensive yarn was just the thing to spend it on -- after all, it's a gift that I'd likely be enjoying during the next full year, since it takes me forever to get through a sweater while I'm in school. The Alpaca & Silk that I bought from Webs was worth every penny -- soft, has a great sheen to it, and a dream to work with. Plus, after the volume discount, it didn't cost as much as I'd feared. The only thing that caught me off-guard is that, since I'm apparently such a loosey-goosey knitter, I had to go down three whole needle sizes to get gauge. But it turns out that Alpaca & Silk can practically be knit on any damn size needle you please, and look pretty great all the same. Crisis averted.

Because I was working on such teeny-tiny needles, it took me a really long time to complete. The torso went quickly, but the sleeves and particularly the neck took some time. However, it made for perfect TiVo/movie knitting: around and around and around in straight stockinette or 2x2 rib. No complaints here.

The end result fits like a glove around my torso, which I'd like to credit to careful swatching but is just as much good luck. (I haven't blocked it yet, either, which could change things eventually.) Preliminary online research revealed complaints about extra room under the arms, so I used these two mods (one, two) with great success. I also added some extra decreases along the upper arms, because they seemed unusually baggy. The result is nicely loose, but not too much so. I was initially going to make the sweater with long sleeves, but decided that 3/4-length would work just as well considering that I always have my sleeves pushed above my elbows when at all possible. (This saved me yarn, too; I was concerned that the super-small needle size would mean that I'd run lower than expected.) I lengthened the collar to make it a little more cowl-y, which I think resulted in extra wrinkling around the shoulder. I don't care, though, because I think that the sweater's awesome.

Looks good! Must have been a dream to knit.