Christmas Sweater Project - IT'S DONE!

It's finished! It's finished! And I'm in love with it. Even though it's now near the end of December, I did in fact finish this in time for the first of the month (even a bit before I think) and have been wearing in quite a bit. My original stated goal of "every friggin' day" is of course impossible since it's generally not considered prudent to wear the same outfit every day. However! It has gotten LOTS of wear, especially to winter/Christmas/festive events and outings throughout the month. I even wore it to work on December 1st to celebrate the start of the best month ever.

I can't overstate how much I love this sweater. This project confirmed that colorwork is really my favorite thing. I love both the process of it (aka the knitting) and the final look. It's wonderfully entertaining to work on and I love how bold the design is. Knitting it this way in little increments over the year was very enjoyable. I loved always have a project on the back burner to work on in between other things combined with not having the pressure to finish as soon as possible. I'm tempted to do it again for next Christmas, although in reality I probably won't. I haven't yet formed my knitting agenda for 2015 but I predict it will include less sweaters since I was sort of a sweater-only fiend this year.

As far as mods go, I did make a few. Most visibly, I added in the white as a fourth color. For the charts, I planned out where I wanted to insert the white and am very pleased with how it turned out, both in terms of how the modifications to the chart interacted with each other and the extra pop of bright white in the finished object overall. I also shortened the length of both the body and the sleeves to fit a little higher on the waist and the wrists. This is just a personal preference of mine for pullovers since I typically like to wear them with collared shirts and slightly higher-waisted pants. I like the look of the cuffs peaking out underneath the sleeves and the shape of a slightly higher waistline for the ribbing on my shape.

The only thing about this project is that when people find out that I made it and then inevitably ask how long it takes to "make something like that" I have a difficult time answering. I have no doubt their intentions are good, but A) don't make me think about how long knitting a garment takes or I shall never undertake it again and B) I have no idea since it was so spread out.

Final verdict is that this project was a huge success!