knit a sweater

The yarn arrived recently. Now I need to finish a pair of belated birthday socks, and then I’ll start swatching for the sweater.

I think I’m going to work mostly out of Elizabeth Zimmermann’s “Knitting Workshop.” Definitely going to be seamless, probably bottom-up; for shoulders, I’m leaning toward raglan. I don’t want to get caught up in too much ornamental stuff on my first sweater; I’m thinking of a little color and texture at the hem and cuffs, and maybe a little more (say, single cable panel on the front).

Just placed an order for the yarn. Now I need to settle on a design.

I’ve more or less committed to starting this process some time this month. However, I’m a long way from settling definitely on a pattern (and, knowing me, I’m unlikely to just knit an existing pattern anyway; I’ll either build from scratch, follow a “recipe”, or heavily modify a pattern), and pricing yarn in sweater quantities is scary.

I’ve been soliciting (and receiving) some good advice over on librarything:

http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=597

I’ve been reading Elizabeth Zimmerman’s “Knitting Workshop,” and I’ve purchased a circular needle. I’ve got a few other projects currently in the que, and then I have to determine a source of yarn inexpensive enough for me to be enough to make a (man-sized) sweater. Knitpicks has some cheap (but not acrylic) yarn, though the yarn I bought from them to make a hat for my friend frankly smells a little odd. I guess washing would solve that…