Arwen Apace

The top-down Arwen is making good progress. I think that I am about an inch away from the waist shaping. It was exceedingly helpful to be able to try the sweater on my sister as I knit the raglan increases, to ensure a perfect fit. It also fits me rather nicely.

The hood is beautiful, I think:

It's not really lopsided; that's just the way it's hanging on my shoulders. But in order to make it hang properly and to give it some extra support, I think I am going to knit in a strip of i-cord across the back of the neck, a la Elizabeth Zimmermann.

Knitting this sweater has made me love my Knitpicks options needles even more than before. In the picture above it is clear that I have used two 24-inch cables to hold the arm stitches, meaning that the stitches were easy to slip to the holder (I just purled the sleeves with separate needles on the previous row and then took off the needles and put on the plugs), and that when I get around to picking up the sleeve stitches, all I'll need to do is put needle tips back on them.