I'm making good progress on my Sky Palette sweater. Last night I hit a real landmark, I had finished knitting the body and I gave the yoke of the sweater a good and gentle steam. Man, did it ever change the look of this sweater! It was amazing. The last time I took a photo of this sweater it looked like this; colourful, but bumpy and not very crisp. After a gentle steam with my steam iron (my steam iron cost me about $11 at Walmart, and I couldn't live without it) the stitches relaxed and the zigzag pattern really started to shine! The beauty of top down sweaters is the ability to try them on as you go, but pre-blocking the yoke was kind of bunching up and wasn't fitting just right... post blocking, it's magic! I'm in love with this sweater.
I'm cruising through the sleeves now and hope to make really good progress on them this weekend. Lots of people struggle with sleeves, they hit the sleeves and get stuck on "sleeve island" (kinda like second sock syndrome I think) I don't have this problem, especially with top down sweaters since knitting the sleeves means I'm practically done! And it gets me one step closer to knitting the button band, and there is literally nothing I like more than picking up stitches for a button band. Hmm, a nice clean edge of perfectly picked up stitches gives me such a knitters high! Anyways, when it comes to the sleeves, I just put my head down and motor through them. They always go quicker than I think they will and I find that if I don't think, just knit, I'll be done before I have time to get bored of the stockinette tube!