I'm done with Relax(ing).

Sigh.  It's true - there's a lot going on around here at the moment, so I've had much less crafting time than usual, and even less time to write about crafting.  But I did manage last weekend to finish the Relax sweater I'd been working on for two months.  And I love it!  It was cool this morning when I went out to do the grocery shopping, so I took the opportunity to put it on:

I wrote a lot about the knitting details in this post, so I won't go over it all again.  But just as a quick recap:  in order to get the knitted fabric I liked, I had to go down from the recommended 3.6mm needle to a 3mm.  Of course, that threw off my gauge, but I still stuck with the size XS.  So instead of a finished bust measurement of 55" I have a closer fit of 50.5", and I'm very happy with it.

One of my favorite details of this design is the row of eyelets going up the sides:

I did make a couple tiny changes to the construction:  the entire sweater was knit in the round to the armhole, then front and back were split and knit flat.  The shoulder shaping is done with short rows.  On my back piece, I worked 2 extra rows of stockinette stitch after the short rows before doing the three-needle bind-off, in an effort to give myself a tiny forward-shoulder adjustment.  I do think it helped a bit with how the sweater sits on my shoulders.

A shape like this is perfect with slim jeans, but I also really like it over a maxi dress:

(And for the shoe-curious:  here are my sandals, several years old, from Boden.  Also, please to note my leopard-print accents on my big toes.)

Here are some flat shots of the sweater;  sadly the weather heated up so as I write this I'm back in a t-shirt!  The crazy wide shape:

That nifty row of eyelets:

After the eyelets are finished, there are a few rows of paired increases to widen the sweater at the bust.

I chose to steam the heck out of my collar to get it to roll less.  I also knit it a few rows longer than the pattern recommended, to bring the neckline in a bit.

And here's that three-needle bind-off at the shoulder:

All in all, a very lovely pattern once I got the fabric worked out.  I would certainly knit this again.  I ended up using less yarn than recommended - 1097 yards rather than the 1260 listed.  I would probably make the sleeve opening a few rows longer - these sleeves are quite close-fitting on me, although not uncomfortable.  But you know I have bigger arms.

Anybody tempted by this pattern?