drops asymmetrical jacket

Finally finished! The knitting went VERY quickly, but this jacket took forever to dry, and then I had to sew on the buttons, which proved to be an exercise in creative problem solving since I knit the thing WITHOUT BUTTONHOLES. I don't actually read through patterns before I start to knit. I should, but I don't. (This bad habit comes from the days when I was just learning to read knitting patterns and all those abbreviations were so intimidating that I decided I would just start knitting anyway and when I got to something I didn't know, then I would look it up. I never kicked the habit.) Now, the whole time I was knitting, I was thinking about how I had a patterned shirt that would match perfectly with the plum yarn and what shoes might look good with that and hey, what if I got some big leather buttons to match my leather shoes that match the shade of tan in the patterned shirt, yeah that's the ticket...so even without reading ahead in the pattern, I knew this jacket was supposed to have buttonholes. For the buttons I was dreaming up the whole time. Yet, in my fervor I completely forgot to pay attention to these things known as "details" and I knit the whole thing right up without buttonholes. Giant DUH. I sewed in three crocheted loops instead. I also hid some small buttons on the inside to keep the collar from shifting.

I knit the bulkier version of the pattern. About that reading ahead...right...I didn't even notice it was written in two gauges until I had already cast on for the bulky version. I liked how quickly it knit up, that's for sure, but I'm tempted to knit this pattern again in the smaller gauge and in a more subtle color, since I bet I would go from liking it to REALLY liking it. But I'm not really one to knit the same thing more than once. For this jacket, I used 7 skeins of Berkshire Bulky in "plum" on size 10.75 needles. I almost got away with 6 skeins for the medium size, but needed a little extra to seam the thing up. I really like the Berkshire Bulky. It's soft, affordable, and comes in some really beautiful colors. The sheep smell was atrocious when I blocked it, and I'll have to see how it wears, but I think I'd use this yarn again. And I blocked the garment after I seamed it. I usually block the pieces first, then seam, but I have to re-block so often that I thought I'd wing it this time and just seam it up, then block it once. It seemed to work out just fine. Ok, I have to go take this sweater off, pronto. It's still summer weather here in the Northeast and one other thing about Berkshire Bulky--the wool/angora blend is warm!! But if fall ever shows up, I'll be wearing this jacket a lot!