The Sweater Saga comes to an end?

Well kids, I finished my epic sweater.  All in all, it was a very educational process. I'd never done fair isle knitting before (for those non-knitters out there, that's where you use several different colors of yarn to make a pretty pattern, and to do so you bring one strand of different-colored yarn behind another color.  Also called stranded knitting).  I'd also never steeked anything (sewing a seam into your knit piece, then cutting the shape you want--totally counter-intuitive to a knitter) (see here for story on my first ever steeking).

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Steeking in progress

Well, all that went pretty well, then I tried to try on the sweater...and the sleeves were too tight, and too short.  Sigh.  And this is the kind of sweater that you have to undo the whole thing from the top down to undo, and then redo, the sleeves.  And unfortunately, I had just cut a big gash in the top of the sweater, so this puppy is staying whole, no matter what.  So, I improvised, and cast on at the end of the sleeves, lengthened them, then blocked the sweater and tried to stretch them out a bit.  This worked pretty well, except for the small seam in the middle of the cuffs.  But I'm going to say that I meant to do that.  Yeah, it was, um, part of the pattern.  Yeah, that's it.  That's also why, um, the cuffs flare out so much, yeah, part of the pattern (wink).

So then I was supposed to find grommets and install them in the neck V, to hold a nice drawstring.  Well, the grommets didn't go so well, so I said screw it and just fed the drawstring straight through the stitches.  We'll see how that holds up.  By that time I was ready to be done with the #$%!! thing and wear it already.

So now (drumroll), here is the Sweater Saga in its full visual glory:

Insomnia Sweater v. 1.2 (sorry, no pics of v. 1.0) (see here for story behind v. 1.0 and v. 1.2).

Insomnia Sweater v. 1.2 in slow, agonizing throes of death (actually the frogging went pretty quickly, except for those $%$&!!! seams).

My first steeking.  Not as traumatic as one would think.  Although, when those sleeves turned out too small, I almost imploded ("Holy f$%#ing s$%t! WTF am I supposed to do if I need to redo something and I've f#$%!!!ing CUT my STITCHES!!!!").  But everything turned out ok in the end.  Hooray for happy endings.

My finished product (Insomnia v. 2.0).  Note the lovely fair isle detail, and the lack of stupid grommets (yeah, who needs grommets anyway?).  Oh, and that lovely steek.  (For those of you attempting to knit this pattern, I cut maybe four inches off of the original steek length, and still think it's a little risque, or (this one's for you Cece!) prurient.  And the sleeves?  How lovely.  Now hopefully I won't give this away, like I do, for some godforsaken, unexplainable reason, with most of my other projects.

p.s. This one goes out to the Crafty Snarkers, who know all about steeking and grommets from my tipsy Thursday night rants.  We miss you!