The first ball weighed 25g. Will try a gauge swatch with the recommended size needles. I’ll cast on 49 sts - 45 sts in pattern and 2 seed st sts on each side. I’ll start with 2 rows of seed st, then work in pattern for 18 rows and 2 more rows of seed st. Before blocking the swatch is 7” wide x 2” long. Had no problem blocking it to 8” wide over 42 sts x 2” long. After blocking the 42 sts were 8” wide x 2” long.

October 31 - Finally finished the first 16 round pattern rep! Unexpected company over the weekend and on the first round I was almost halfway through the round and around a dozen stitches fell off the end and I can’t fix that, so I had to start over. This yarn is really hard to frog! So on start # 2 I used stitch markers between each pattern rep and took my time and I did it! Once I get through the next round of nupps it should get faster. Those slow things down! And I got the first round of the second rep of the Dangling Cherries chart done, which is the round with the nupps! Didn’t get anything else done with the trick or treaters coming around and Dylan coming home.

November 4 - Done the 2 reps of the Dangling Cherries chart. On round 16 I decreased 5 sts by knitting 18 sts, k2tog once, then k 38, k2tog four times, then k 20. This let me use the markers, which were 20 sts apart. There’s 14g left so the 36 rounds used 11g - 99m/108y.

November 7 - Finished the first 24 round rep of the Chinese Lace pattern. I’m finally working close to my normal speed. This is my first time using anything smaller than sport weight and it had to be fluffy and pretty much as thin as thread so there was a learning curve! There’s 8g left and there was 14g left after the Dangling Cherries chart was done so the rep used 6g - 54m/59y. It’s 14cm (5-1/2”) long.

November 9 - Finished the second rep of the Chinese Lace pattern. Had 4 rounds left to finish today and should get a bit more done today. I have about 1g of yarn left from the first ball. My scale would register 0g weighing it alone but when I put the new ball on the scale it weighed 25g and 26g with the remainder of the first ball added to it.

November 14 - Got to 26cm in length after finishing the 3rd pattern rep which is where I’ll increase 5 sts just before your bust. When I decreased the 5 sts three were on the front and two on the back. To get the pattern centred later after the underarm decreases so it’s centred both between the armhole edges and the neck I need to add 2 sts to the first Intersecting pattern after the beginning of the round and 1 st to the last Intersecting pattern before the halfway point marker, all in the Purl sections. Can’t add to the Chinese Lace pattern without screwing up the increases and decreases. The extra purl sts will be part of the underarm decreases so the pattern won’t be disturbed. I can’t quite centre the back sts, but it’ll only be off by one stitch, not bad! So just after the halfway marker, the rest of the 7th pattern rep (8 sts Chinese Lace) is first, then the 2 sts are both added to the next Intersecting pattern, one/purl section, only one of which will be decreased later so this section will have 7 sts after the underarm decreases (8 Chinese Lace plus one of the extra purl sts). The round finishes with the Chinese Lace pattern, which will all be decreased by the underarm shaping, which will leave the Intersecting pattern at the armhole edges on both sides and the Chinese Lace pattern is off centre by 1 stitch. With 100 sts/side sts 150 & 151 are the centre sts but with 9 sts/Chinese Lace pattern there’s 3 sts on one side of centre and 4 on the other side, which shouldn’t even be noticeable.

November 18 - Finished the fourth pattern rep and it’s 33cm long. There’s 13g left of the second ball. 4cm to go.

November 22 - Finished the 4cm. Finished round 15 of the 5th pattern rep before separating the front and back so need to start on row 16. There’s 9g left of the second ball. The boys have been home since the 19th and left today so I didn’t get much knitting time in but I can’t think of a better reason for not knitting!

November 26 - Got to 18cm from the armhole tonight and am almost finished the second ball. Ended on the 8th row of the 8th pattern rep. Will do the shoulder and neck shaping tomorrow and will take a picture then.

November 27 - Finished the decreases and have a tiny bit of yarn left of the second ball, which I’ll use for seaming later.

December 4 - Got to 10cm on the front. There’s 21g left so it used 4g of yarn. Now for the front neck shaping.

December 5 - Finished the body! There’s 19g and 23g left so the rest of the front used 4g of yarn. The body weighed 58g. Now I’m down to the sleeves, which I’ll do 2 at a time.

December 7 - Finished the Dangling Cherries chart and one rep of the Chinese Lace pattern and the sleeves are 11cm long.

December 9 - Finished the second rep and the sleeves are 17.5cm long. There’s 15g and 18g left so the sleeves used 9g.

December 10 - Finished the third rep and it’s 25cm long. There’s 13g and 15g left so the rep used 5g.

December 11 - Finished the fourth rep and it’s 31cm long. There’s 10g and 13g left so the rep used 5g.

December 12 - Finished fifth rep and it’s 38cm long. There’s 8g and 12g left so the rep used 3g. Gotta love a scale that has a +/- 1g tolerance.

December 15 - Finished the sixth rep and it’s 43cm long. There’s 6g and 10g left so the rep used 4g. Now on to the armhole shaping. I also blocked the body so,it’d be ready for seaming. The designer used thread and the back stitch to seam with but I had no matching thread so we looked at different projects but couldn’t really find anything out. So she put up a poll and most people answered that they just used the yarn and matress stitch to seam with. I tried a shoulder seam and it worked really well so that’s what I’m going to use.

December 17 - Finished the sleeves! 7 repeats plus 4 rows of the 8th repeat. There’s 3g and 7g left so the shaping used 6g. The sleeves weighed 32g. So far I haven’t used 4 balls. The body plus the sleeves weigh 90g.
Before blocking the sleeves are 60cm long and the stocking stitch on each side made measuring the width too hard. I blocked the sleeves to 30cm wide at the underarm, 20cm at the bottom, which is how wide they were, and 62cm long. I measured the armhole opening on the sweater (53cm) and tried to shape the sleeve tops to the same measurement.

December 19 - Picked up roughly 3 out of every 4 stitches or rows along the front neck edges and had 116 not 114 so I’ll knit or purl 2 sts together near each shoulder seam. Phew! Used the 65cm stainless steel needles to pick up the stitches because I wasn’t sure which length to use but am going to switch to the 43cm ones as the sts are fairly spread out now and the ribbing will pull it in more. I’m using the 3g leftover from the sleeves. The collar used 1.5g of yarn so the sweater used 91.5g of yarn.

December 23 - Finished the sleeves! Now I’ve got to seam the sleeves to the body. So close to the end now.

December 24 - Finally finished! Almost finished the seams yesterday. Only had about 1/4 of the second sleeve left to finish today. Seaming used up the little bit left over from the back plus enough for the last seam seaming the last sleeve to the body. Will get better pictures tomorrow in daylight.