Turquoise Sweater Is Done

This turned out to be a sweater I really like and will wear a lot in the future.  Though I drafted the pattern myself, the design is based on this sweater from Coats and Clark:

http://www.coatsandclark.com/Crafts/Knitting/Projects/Apparel/WC1080+Knit+Springtime+Tee.htm

I used the pattern stitch and turned the design into a cardigan using my TNT sweater pattern.

This sweater is made from Red Heart SuperSaver yarn and cost around $10 to make.  Red Heart SuperSaver softens up nicely with washing and is easy to manipulate to get the effect you want.  For example, this lace pattern tends to shrink upwards so that you can't see the pattern very well, but a gentle steam blocking relaxed the yarn and gave that portion of the sweater nice drape.  You have to be very careful applying heat to an acrylic yarn because you can fry it, but I've made so many Red Heart sweaters that I am used to its properties. I use a cotton dishtowel and have the iron on 'Wool', and I never press down on the fabric. My sweaters have lovely colors and go right into the washer and dryer.

I am looking forward to the election in two weeks because after it is over I will stop getting the dozens of phone calls I get every day from people trying to get my vote.  Our main phone is a technological dinosaur without call screening - in fact, it is a rotary dial phone.  We tried to put a more modern phone in the kitchen, where this phone is, but they would keep breaking.  Someone told us that the phone was too close to large appliances to work well, so we went out to the garage to rescue the exiled old phone, and put it back in place.  I remember how my niece wanted to make a phone call from our house one time and was totally puzzled by the rotary dial.  "How do you work this thing??!!" she called.  A child of the push-button age.