Yep, I just found the song in my iTunes library to accompany this morning’s blogging. Just picture me sitting here with my cup of coffee doing the “wooowooo” section that comes right before the big build up to “Why do you build me up, buttercup baby, just to let me down…” It seems that I typed “butter” into the iTunes search field, so now we’ve got The Band doing “Mystery Train” with Paul Butterfield. I’ll take it. Anyway, despite the obvious connection to “Build Me Up Buttercup,” bits of the song do seem relevant to my feelings about this sweater. I’ve got lots of pictures today of me in the sweater in various stages of the rest of the knitting.

Here’s Buttercup after binding off the body. In this picture you can totally see when I put it away for several weeks — that line around my middle is not my shorts showing through; that’s a crease from where my circular needles lingered for all too long.

Here’s a close up of the neckline. I picked up stitches as directed, but knit a few extra rows to bring the neckline in a little bit. I love this neckline, and I think it is pretty flattering. The challenge will be what to wear underneath it because of how open some of the lacework is.

In this picture, I think I’ve got one of the sleeves finished, and I’m wearing the top over a black dress with a fairly deep v-neck.

Here’s a full length shot, over a long-sleeve tee. I’m hoping that blocking will take care of that wavy bit near the bottom, and I’m hoping to get just a little more length out of it so that the finished sweater will be in between a regular sweater and a tunic.

Yay! I like this one.

And here it is, blocking on the dining room table. I’m not really sure how this fabric will behave. I’m pretty sure I blocked my swatch, but such a small square of knitting doesn’t really offer a lot of certainty when I want to know how a whole sweater of cotton-linen yarn is going to act. I’m a bit worried that the  weight of the sweater will drag down the neckline as I wear it. Have you guys ever put a cotton-linen blend in the dryer on low? If this opens up too much, I might attempt that.

I’m happy with the choices I made to knit a slightly more fitted version of this sweater, as I’m not sure I can pull off any more yellow. Also, I like a gentler A-line shape, and this way, I had plenty of yarn. I sort of can’t believe that this only took 6.5 balls of Cotolino. (I had 8, and was worried I wouldn’t have enough to knit the sweater as written. Each ball is 105 meters.)

Oh, and Boh says hi. Stay tuned for some FO pictures after Buttercup is blocked. Fingers crossed!