I heart this sweater

Chinese lace, originally uploaded by gradschoolknitter.

Have I mentioned that I've wanted to make this sweater FOREVER. And now that it's getting close to being done (ok, so I'm on the first sleeve and we all know how me and second sleeves go...) I'm loving it even more. I actually want it to be cold out so that I can wear it. Seriously, in love.

The sleeves, however, are not so much in love with me. I spent most of Sunday afternoon attempting to cast on the first sleeve. I had wanted to do both at once, but that just wasn't going to happen. First I tried casting on for the lace portion. HUGE. I mean, 5 times the size of my arm huge. I know they're supposed to be bell sleeves, but this was ridiculous. So we looked at a bunch of the pictures of finished Chinese Lace Pullovers on Ravelry and I actually decided that I wasn't in love with the lacey bell sleeve. So then I tried casting on the # of stitches for the decreased ribbing. Not as huge, but still way too big for my taste. So I ripped that back and finally decided to cast on to smaller needles, but only for the ribbing. I didn't want to mess too much with the numbers... I was afraid it wouldn't work out for the sleeve caps. I may switch to larger needles as I get closer to the top too, just to see how that goes.