EZ Seamless Saddle Shouldered Sweater

Please excuse the flashy shot - when it's not six million degrees outside and no longer raining ashes, I'll try to get a better photo!

Pattern: Elizabeth Zimmermann's Seamless Saddle Shoulder Pullover (found in several of her books, including Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Workshop, and The Opinionated Knitter.
Yarn: Koigu Painter's Palette Premium Merino, colorway 326; 6 skeins
Size: 40" Bust
Needles: US 2 (2.75 mm)

Comments: The EZ in the title of this post refers to Elizabeth Zimmermann, and not how easy this sweater was to knit - but it may as well refer to that, as it truly did seem to fly off the needles with minimal notes required. Of course, I did some modifications to the recipe/pattern as usual, not completely following the instructions as written. Modifications include:

• provisionally casting on for the sleeves so that after finishing the body and neckline, I could just knit on the sleeves until I ran out of yarn
• V-neck
• grafted back placket (a la the hybrid style sweater)

Knit from the bottom up*, this sweater moved along surprisingly fast given that it's almost completely knit in fine gauge stockinette. I had several learning "opportunities" along the way, including discovering that no matter what I did with a folded hem, it seemed determined to flip outwards - I finally opted to finish with a 1x1 rib at the bottom of the sweater (that I can either wear tucked up underneath the sweater, or pulled down for a longer look), and notched (to accommodate my elbows) seed stitch edges at the sleeves. In addition to the flippy hem, I discovered the way I have previously executed applied i-cord (used to finish the edge around the neckline) was not working real well (it looked sloppy for some reason) - I wound up picking up all the stitches first, then applying the i-cord edging.

I have to say I'm quite pleased with how this sweater fits, and I'm tickled at where the sleeves ended up. The curious among you may wonder just how much yarn I had left...and the answer is hardly any. More specifically, after knitting both sleeves simultaneously down from the body of the sweater and binding off, I had a mere 2-3 inches of yarn left attached to each sleeve!


*if you were reading along my main blog, you might note that I apparently rushed into splitting the top for the V neck and yoke - I wound up picking up stitches above the hem, unzipping the knitting stitch by stitch, and knitting downwards adding additional length.