My North Carolina Sweater!!!

I have finally finished my sweater & have called it my North Carolina Sweater!!! I had a few bumps along the way. But I’m very happy with the end result & I can’t wait to use it!!! It is super warm & big & cuddly! LOL

The sweater was a kit that I received for Christmas a couple of years ago. It was from Mary Maxim. The yarn is Mary Maxim Ragg which is an acrylic yarn. And the pattern is also from Mary Maxim, called Ragg Jacket. It actually knit up fairly quickly. It was done in parts. The back part was of course the longest to complete, but after that it went fairly quickly when I did work on it.

Since the yarn is 100% acrylic I wasn’t sure about blocking it. I believe I wrote a post on it a few months back. I have read that acrylic yarn can not be blocked & I’ve also seen a few articles saying that you can block it by using steam. Well, I decided to take some of the advice I received in my post and block them like I normally block things. So I soaked each piece as I finished them & pinned them on my blocking mats.

I’m glad I did because I could tell a difference in the pieces afterwards! It was much smoother & looked so much better! So even though acrylic yarn may not block like other yarns I think it is still a good idea to block it.

I did have an issue with the sleeves & I should have known as I was knitting them but they came out huge! I finished both of them, blocked them & as I was putting all the pieces together I realized there was just no way the sleeves were going to fit into the armhole area! And they were super, super long! I mean so long that my husband referred to them as sleeves for Big Foot! LOL So I took them both apart & started over again. I reduced the number of increases from 70 to 60 as well as the number of rows to do the increasing. I didn’t make them as long before starting the decrease (instead of 17″ I did 15 1/2″). I also reduced the amount of rows on the decreases. The new finished sleeves fit perfectly! woop woop!

And now came the fun part! The sewing up! LOL I’m not that great at it & it really isn’t my favorite thing to do but it has to be done! All in all it wasn’t too bad. It didn’t take me forever like I thought it would. 🙂

I tried it on & yay! Loved it!