I finished the sleeves on my sweater! I must say, I am very pleased with the way they came out! I got the striping to be roughly the same for both sleeves. Here's a look at the sleeves by themselves:

The flash makes the colors a little hot in this picture, but otherwise it is a pretty good likeness. I also decided to take a look at the pieces together and got a really lovely surprise:

The stripes on the top half of the sweater pretty much match all the way around! How cool is that. It was pretty much serendipity at work, however, because it wasn't until I started the sleeves that it occurred to me that I should be picking my starting skeins carefully.

I'm a little amazed by how bright this sweater is! I don't think I would normally pick these kinds of colors for myself. Now that I have got it though, I can't wait to get it blocked and sewn up.

That's right. I did use the word "blocked" before the phrase "sewn up". I am going to try to block it tomorrow night (while I start my Fuzzy Feet) . Then I am going to do something even more radical -- I am going to try to seam it up with mattress stitch instead of my usual backstitch.

One of my personal goals in picking this pattern was to pick something simple and try hard to work on my technique. I knitted a gauge swatch, I cast on using larger needles so I could avoid any tightness at the bottom of the sweater, I checked my gauge while I was knitting, I made sure the side stitches were pulled a little extra to give a neat edge. So far I am pleased with the results of my efforts. I did knit pretty much to gauge (and I have used about the amount of yarn suggested by the pattern -- normally I go over). I feel like my tensioning skills are much better, too.

Silk Garden is terribly addicting stuff. I find myself constantly cruising eBay and online yarn stores looking for deals and trying to decide what color I want to work with next -- I still want to tackle the little cardigan in the same pattern book as this sweater comes from. Noro must lace this stuff with the yarn equivalent of heroin.... which for me would be silk...