April is the cruelest month

There is no way I am going to finish my April sweater for the sweater-a-month KAL. After a series of false starts on my adult-size version of Anny Purl's Cardigan for Merry, which is a child-size raglan version of Kate Gilbert's Cardigan for Arwen, I am only this far:


I've never knitted a sweater with fronts and back in one piece before; while it appeals to me not to have to do pretty much any seaming, it is slow going, and I find it a bit disheartening to knit a whole ball's worth of yarn and only seems to have created a few inches of fabric. The reversible cable, however, fascinates me enough to keep my interest -- the right and wrong sides do look almost exactly the same, and the construction is ingeniously simple.

The bottom appears to roll with abandon here because I have not tacked down the hem yet; I am waiting until I do Elizabeth Zimmermann's phony seam from the armpits down. I found a nice laceweight merino that is almost the same color as the main yarn to use for the hem facing, and I am hoping that the difference in weight will minimize the bulkiness and obviousness of the hemline.

The yarn I am using, Lana Grossa Merino Big, is a pleasure to work with. It's very much like Karabella Aurora 8, but at a DK gauge. So far it seems like a good alternative to Filatura di Crosa Zara. All three yarns have a lot of small plies with a lot of twist and a rounded shape, a ton of elasticity, great stitch definition, and absolutely no scratchiness. I am hoping that the sweater does not pill like crazy despite its being merino -- the last two merino sweaters I knit, with Debbie Bliss Merino DK, are pill factories.