Now where were we?

Ah yes, the blue striped sweater.  

When you last saw it, it was just a couple sections below the armpit.

And here we are, looking exactly the same.  Well almost.  And yet, there was a lot of knitting done to get it back here.

I washed the swatch with some bath towels to see how it was going to shrink up.  It did as expected in the length, but it shrank a little more horizontally than I thought it would.  I decided to add a couple stitches under the arms to give it that little bit extra.

It would have been plenty roomy for my wee fellow, but with the shrinkage, the sweaters lifespan would have been short.  The pattern had a lot of comments that it seemed to run narrow on the body and with that little bit more shrinkage, my larger by a little bit gauge just didn't feel like enough to compensate.  

Very early this morning, I ripped back to underarms and added 2 stitches at each armpit (this gives me a full extra inch of width) and away I went.  I love the way the colours look in these 6 row stripes.  It just tickles my fancy.  

And being small and in a chunky cotton?  Fast knitting.  It took almost no time at all to get back to this.

I just want to put in a good word for this lovely cotton, Wendy Supreme Chunky.  After washing, I love it even more.  It grows soft but stays nice and crisp looking after the full bore washer and dryer torture test in a permanent press cycle. No namby pamby front loader either.  My new wee machine is a good old fashioned top loader and the yarn stood the test of its small drum and agitator just fine.

So maybe tomorrow morning for finishing?  We shall see.  

And that is right where we are.