swatching and trading

Here's a picture of the Samus swatch. I can never seem to photograph this yarn so the color shows up correctly. I think this was my best effort, but it's still not quite right.



It turns out that the swatch did expand a bit more as it dried. I think the gauge is spot on now. It may even be the tiniest bit loose (we're talking fractions of stitches of here). It's close enough. I'm planning to make the 36" size, which is only 2" of ease, so if it ends up a tiny bit wider it will be perfectly fine. Anything between 36" and 38" final size will be fine for me for this sweater. If anything, I'm afraid that it will be hard to resist the temptation to really tighted up on the cables, which I tend to and like to do. I'll see what happens, and maybe will decide to do an extra full or partial pattern repeat if I do that. No biggie.

In more exciting news (because I know you're all about to pass out from boredom after reading about swatches), I finally found someone to trade my 7 skeins of Patons Classic Merino with. In return for sending her that yarn, I'm getting Socks Socks Socks, The Complete Book of Traditional Aran Knitting, and some really old back issues of IK. Schweet! I've been looking to get rid of this yarn for a while, and the books sound interesting and helpful, so this is a great trade for me.