It was a late night, but I couldn't stop once I started the final touches. I finished the crochet chain up the side of buttonbands, sewed on buttons, sewed in ends, used kitchener stitch to graft the underarm stitches together (couldn't find enough good yarn so had to substitute some navy sock yarn), soaked it in cold water with Kookaburra woolwash (lovely eucalyptus smell), spun it dry in the washer on spin cycle, pinned it out and let the Blocking Magic go to work:
I love blocking - it's when you get to tell your knitting who's boss. In this case, I had begun the yoke decreases about 1 inch early because I was running out of blue yarn. So the shoulder area, in addition to the natural tighter tension that most people get when knitting colorwork, was also lower and tighter than ideal. I pinned it out more assertively than the rest of the sweater, making sure the buttonbands were straight, and let it dry that way. No curls at the bottom edge now, and the buttonband is staying pretty straight. There's one spot where it's going to want to gap a bit, but I can live with it.
This is the kind of sweater I love to wear 9 months out of the year in our climate. Layered over a simple cotton tee, with either pants or skirt, I can go from teaching the conjugation of the pluperfect subjunctive to grocery shopping to cooking and (hopefully) very light housework before putting my feet up and knitting while watching Dr. Who reruns with the boys. Which reminds me, there is a Tardis hidden along the skyline on the back of the sweater. It needs a little shiny bead on top still.
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