Leftover Yarn Goodness

After making this sweater, I had a little more than 5 skeins of this lovely pink yarn left.

I usually purchase an extra skein, but this amount of overage was just silly.  My gauge wasn't that far off, so I suspect the pattern is overly cautious when it comes to yardage needed.  

Unfortunately, most sweater patterns in my library require at least 1,000 yards of yarn.  So what was to become of my pretty pink yarn . . . it seemed a shame to stuff it back in a drawer. 

And then I remembered how well my first Jailbird Blouse came out.  It's short-sleeved and cropped, so there was a good chance that I might have enough yarn for the project.

And clearly, there was!  As I was knitting along, there came a point where I was convinced that I would run out of yarn, but it turns out I have a tiny little bit left over after all is done.  This time around, I win yarn chicken!

For this version, I decided to fold the neckline as well as the armhole ribbing.  I wasn't sure how the armholes would look, but I like how they turned out, and I will probably use this technique again for short sleeved sweaters.

It's always fun to pull out the double pointed needles.  Setting them up for the first couple of rows is always awkward for me, but once I get going, I rather enjoy the technique.

And somewhere around this point of the sweater construction, I had a thought.

There is already one version of this pattern in a solid color in my drawer, so what should I do to make this one a little bit different.  Well, I decided that I should add a monogram to this sweater. 

The similarity to Laverne and Shirley does not escape me (which may be one of the reasons why I avoid adding monograms to my clothing), but I went ahead with the plan because I have been on a bit of an embroidery kick as of late.

In order to get the placement right, and know where I wanted my stitches placed as I was rotating the garment, I sketched the letter on a handy piece of paper and stitched it in place with a length of contrasting yarn.  That gets torn away after the basted outline is in place.

The technique worked quite well.

This was a very quick process, and it is rather subtle since there is no color contrast, but I really like the result.

Does this mean that I will start monogramming everything in my closet?  Probably not.

But I suspect I will be embellishing more sweaters at some point.

I definitely see floral designs in my future.