Finally Oranje

Oranje is finally finished.  Completely finished. Pictures and everything.

Oranje was certainly a long process beginning with several nights agonizing over whether I should buy yarn to start the project.  Then there were the color decisions.  When the yarn was finally settled on, the knitting itself brought many new challenges--fair-isle with three colors, nine Latvian braids, steeks, and sewing in my first zipper.  Phew!

After finishing the main knitting back in August, there was the pesky problem of reinforcing the steeks so they could be cut.  The sweater sat and sat until it finally made the trip to Atlanta with me in early November where I would have access to a sewing machine.  Not having worked a sewing machine in probably 15 years, I was hopelessly confused.  I'm all grown up, but sometimes I just need my Mom.

I love you Mom! Thank you!

I took the scissors to Oranje immediately after the steeks were sewn.  Leading up to this step, I had not been nervous about cutting my knitting.  I didn't approach the task with fearful anticipation, felt no need to down hard liquor before starting the actual cutting, and didn't hesitate to make that first cut.  However, after I started cutting, my heart started racing.  I think I felt a little dizzy when I hit the colorwork section.

Holding breath...heart pounding...

The steeks were finally behind me, and my pullover was officially a cardigan.

Uh, now what?

Of course since I wanted to be able to close said cardigan, I was left trying to figure out the whole zipper thing.  I had decided early on that I wanted to follow others' examples and insert a zipper instead of buttons.  Had I ever sewn a zipper into a sweater?  Nope.  Had I ever sewn a zipper into anything?  Nah.  I knit facings for the zipper following notes from other finished Oranje sweaters on Ravelry, and then finally sucked it up and sewed in the zipper.  After reading through many, many tutorials, I decided to follow this one.  And you know what?  It totally worked!  Perfectly.  I felt like a rock star when the zipper worked.  Seriously, a ROCK STAR.  I may have sat zipping and unzipping the sweater over and over in amazement and proclaiming to Mike my new rock star status.  Training for a marathon?  Eh, no big deal.  I had sewn a zipper into a sweater.  And the zipper WORKS!

Check out that awesome zipper action!

I have since come back down to Earth, but I have an awesome sweater to remind me whenever I put it on and zip it up that I am a rock star.