Cobblestone Completed (and other alliterations)

Don't it look all fine with no one in it?

Specs (which can also be viewed on my little slice of Ravelry):

Pattern: Cobblestone
Yarn: di.Ve' Zenith
Needle Size: US 9 / 5.5 mm

Just a few gripes and ga-ga's regarding the yarn...

• ga-ga--soft, soft, soft for wool. My goodness, is it soft


• gripe--It's supposed to be a worsted or aran, but it knits way too compactly on the size of needle called for in the pattern (US 7). It wonks up the math for which size I should knit to get the size I want. Once I got gauge on size 9, I went ahead and followed the instructions for the 47.5" chest size. It came out right until I went to wet block, which leads me to my next...


• gripe--This yarn stretches big time when it is wet. Wet blocking was a nightmare, and the garter stitch yoke resembles lace. I was near tears while I was patting out the stupid thing on the towels, sure that I was going to have to rip out every last stitch and reknit it on smaller needles. But then I had an idea, based on the final...


• ga-ga--"Shrink resistant" is one of the claims of Zenith, so I decided to test that. If I could tumble dry all the water out of the sweater, maybe it would go back to its pre-washed size. So, I stuck it in the dryer on high heat for 40 min. And voila!

It went back to normal. Mostly. The sleeves grew longer and wouldn't go back. All in all, the pattern turned out two and a half inches wider in the circumference than what the pattern predicted.



And the back is still a little see-through. If I ever use this yarn again--and I might--I'll have to remember its stretchy-when-wet proclivity and keep the needle size conservative.

But, oh, the yarn is soft.