FO: Bluebell Boatneck Pullover

Another sweater, complete. I am hoping that I will get to put this away now for a few months now that it's finished, but alas. Paris. Optimistically, I will hope to keep it out of wintertime clothes storage for a trip to the arctic, pessimistically, I will keep it out because it's Paris and I'll probably need it on a freak day in July.

Actually, this is a gift, so I won't be wearing it at all. Oh, and the recipient is a bit smaller than me, so the sleeves will be more likely to hit their wristbone, and I'm wearing it with negative ease.

It's a really simple sweater- From the "Fitted Knits" book. The columns of waist ribbing gives it structure and shape without too much fuss. I made a couple of small mods in the sleeves (like working them in the round and not letting the sleeve flare too much at the end) and it's just a cute, functional sweater. I might tinker with the neck a bit, as even after blocking it rolls out and just looks unfinished.

It only used 4.5 skeins of my beloved Cascade 200 Tweed- 990 yards for the 36" size. I can not get this yarn to die, as this is the second sweater I've gotten out of a bag of this yarn, plus a hat. I am so sick of it, but I'm really honestly trying to use up what I've got instead of having odd skeins of leftovers uninspringly take up room in my stash for eternity.

I'm totally laughing at this guy helplessly crashing his boat against the side of the pond. Which I considered him doing okay, granted I've seen a ton of people rowing their boat backwards in this lake. The pointy end of the boat is meant to slice through the water, and somewhere in their nautical training, they failed to notice this design feature.

Delft

These pictures are a few years old, but being on a Netherlands kick that I am, I realized I had never shared them and I dug them up.

There's lots of great little villages in the Netherlands, and it's a very small country so they are all fairly easy to get to from Amsterdam.

Delft is only 40 minutes away from Amsterdam by train. It's adorable, and some of the scenes look exactly like Vermeer painted them when he resided here. Also, it was where Werner Herzgog set most of his film "Nosferatu", which is one of the creepiest movies I've ever seen.

Happily, there were no vampires or plagues of rats to be found now.

I was there in October and had a couple days of stunningly beautiful weather. The light in the afternoon made magic.

The "View of Delft", much as Vermeer had seen it:

In centuries past, Delft was known for its ceramics industry, which was an attempt to knock off fine China from China. While tourist shops sell chinese-made ceramics painted in Delft Blue, you can still find beautiful antique vases and tile work there.

Both of the churches in town had quite a lean on their steeples:

There wasn't much to do there but it was a lovely place to wander around and explore for a couple of days.