1. My sweater. I found thissweater pattern on Knitty perhaps almost a year ago. I got the yarn for my birthday (in October). It is Adrienne Vittadini, Natasha, in Truffle. It is the yarn used in the sample on the site. In general I am squeamish about changing the yarn used in the original project for reasons which will become clear further on. The benefit of using the fancy yarn recommended by a project months after the project has been designed is that the yarn is usually on sale by that point. The lovely folks at the California Yarn Company were able to supply me the million balls of yarn needed for this sweater at ½ price. I held on to the yarn for some time, making all the socks and things that appear here. I live on the California Central Coast, so it is cold in the summer, a perfect time to make and wear my new sweater. I knit a swatch. I don't know why I do this. Invariably I'm more careful when knitting the swatch then when doing my actual knitting and the stitches come out smaller than when I'm actually knitting. What this means is that for every project for which I've knit a swatch, no joke, I've gone up a needle size to accommodate my small stitches and ended up with a giant thing that I have to frog and start over on the originally recommended needle size. Well, guess what happened with my sweater... I got the back, both front pieces, and one sleeve done. I held that sleeve up to my arm and had flash backs to the first sweater I made, a fair-isle disaster that would have fit the chimpanzee President of the United States, but not a human with normally proportioned arms. Well, that was two weeks ago. Since then, I took a short break from the sweater and then went at it again with such gusto that my wrist hurts most of the time, but, i've got a back, two front pieces and most of a sleeve. I'm on pins and needles until that first sleeve is done.