Ragna blocking

Ragna is off the needles and blocking! The pattern, from Viking Patterns for Knitting, is a basic drop-shoulder pullover with no particularly difficult shaping, but it's a cable extravaganza that I expect will flatten out a lot with blocking.

Here's the front, wrong side. Yikes, there are about a million ends to weave in. Cables always look like crap on the wrong side, don't they?

The back is much neater -looking once the ends are woven in. I'm ready to start pinning this one out. One nice thing about the Denise interchangeable needle set -- you can leave it on as a stitch-holder and block; since it's plastic, it won't rust.

I pinned the whole thing out on towels & laid it out on our bed to dry. Uff da, wet wool smells musty. Once the blocked pieces are dry, I will seam the shoulders & sides, and knit the funnel-neck collar... it has cables, of course.

And now I present... the obligatory photo of the pile of ends. Having cleared the needles at last, I have cast on the sweater for which Mike has been asking for, oh, at least three years. (The yarn was bought & stashed a couple months ago.) It's a V-neck sweater vest with a wide ribbed pattern cribbed from the Sixth Sense sock pattern, knit in the same wool as Ragna, actually... Elann's ever-versatile, ever-affordable Highland Wool. I've knit at least half a dozen projects in it. One of these days I'll gather up all the leftover half-balls of Highland that I've got lying around and knit a crazy-stripe felted tote bag or something. Wouldn't that look cool?