Hello. It's me. (*To be read in Adele's voice*)

So, how do you start a blog post after 8 months of radio silence?  By ignoring most of what has happened over the past 8 months, because it's been full of ups and downs and twists and turns - as most life paths are - and if I waited until I had the words to speak reflectively about it, you'd probably never hear from me again.  So for now, we'll just focus on a sweater that I finished recently.

Now looking over my past couple of posts you might think "does she even sew anymore?" and I can assure you that I do.  Yes, sewing definitely slowed down during my time in grad school - especially during those out-of-town clinical rotations - but it never completely dried up.  As always, I'm just pretty terrible about getting around to taking pictures.  It's good to know that in a world of constant change, some things stay the same.

Perhaps I feel more motivated to take pictures of knitted items because they're a much greater investment in time and I feel that I owe it to myself to at least get some photographic evidence of all the hours I spent knitting away.  And this case, all the hours I spent cabling away, because look at all those cables!  Fortunately, it was a super-basic cable pattern that didn't require a whole lot of brain power - just staying power.

The pattern is the Coastal Pullover by Hannah Fettig and the yarn is Valley Yarns Northampton in the gold color way.  I'm kind of smitten with this color lately, which seems very timely for fall, but truth be told, I also found myself making may items in this color in the height of spring and summer.  Given my coloring, I'm not convinced that this is a color that I actually look good in, but sometimes the heart wants what the heart wants.

The pattern was good, although personally I was a bit confused as to how to continue the cable pattern with the raglan increases and sleeve decreases.  I felt that I could have used a bit more guidance at that point but it all turned out just fine in the end.  The neck is a little more of a funnel neck than I would have preferred and I should have followed the darn directions and bound off in pattern, but I'm also learning to not be so darn nitpicky about the things that I make.  Are they perfect?  Far from it.  But as it turns out, that neither am I, so I'll just take them as a reflection of who I am.

As for the yarn, I have always been happy with the Valley Yarns that I've ordered.  They seem to be a good product at a good price.  The only issue I ever have is guilt at buying something on-line rather than supporting local yarn sstores, but sometimes a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

And this girl's gotta get some motivation to document some of my favorite makes over the past year because 2017 is quickly coming to an end and how can I have an end of the year wrap up post if I've posted a whopping 3 finished items?