Herbology O.W.L - DONE!!!

Here's what was supposed to post on Friday....

From here on in, it's All About the O.W.L. For most of November (until the 14th, to be precise), I've been avoiding my Herbology O.W.L. Slytherin needs the 100 points we'd get if I finish, and we need it badly. (I've tried to get as many points this term as I personally can, y'all know that!) The sleeves, however, just weren't working for me, so I needed a way to fix them that wouldn't really take away from what I'd stated the project would be. Enter Moss Stitch, the main stitch of said sleeves outside the Celtic cabled area. Moss Stitch can hide a multitude of sins... and, luckily, of SEAMS. I whipped up two inserts, one for each sleeve, to widen them up to the point they should've been in the first place. (Yes, I carefully made a schematic... and managed to READ IT INCORRECTLY for the sleeves. I did two selvege stitches on each side of each insert, since I knew I'd be "killing" at least one pattern repeat on each side of each seam. I made the first seam (to the front of each sleeve, and as invisibly as possible!), and pinned it out to see how it was.


That pointed out that the shoulder cap was just plain WRONG. Which was cool; something had been off about it. So, FROG back, but not as bad as I'd feared (remember, I was a bit worried that I'd have to re-do both entire sleeves!). The sleeves, minus cap and a bit of cable, went on stitch holders.

Then I noticed there was a cable miscrossed. AIGH!!

oops.

... and reknitting.

So, I have most of the back finished, and this puts me in GREAT shape for knitting over the weekend and getting everything turned in on time.

POINTS FOR SLYTHERIN!!!

That, of course, would've led to yesterday me announcing that my OWL was done, woohoo... but yesterday, it wasn't. My sleep schedule is so wonky that I was perfectly awake when I did finish it... this morning, at 2:20 a.m. I took a nap, and I'm attempting a day at work (sitting down, thankfully). But the OWL is done! Pardon the blurry photos; I had trouble standing still due to wobbling a bit, but you get the idea. It's a lovely sweater, came out the way I wanted (I can wear fairly bukly things under it, which is the point of the Pretty Outer Sweater).





I'm glad I added the triangle detail to the sleeves and put in the button band. Also glad I've learned the increase-needle-size-every-six-rows trick for the collar; that also worked well. The turned-in hems on the sleeves and, well, hem keep everything Just So, and grafting, instead of sewing, the seems worked really well.








I like my sweater. And, okay, POINTS FOR SLYTHERIN!!