Rogue Gets A Hood

I am taking my sweet time with Rogue.  On Saturday evening I finished up the hood cabling (Claudia is right... the hood eats up a surprising amount of yarn!) and set it down hoping for a sunny Sunday on which to use the good light of day to graft the two cable panels together.  After digging out my Montse Stanley book (Knitter's Handbook : A Comprehensive Guide to the Principles and Techniques of Handknitting ) and reviewing the process of grafting when there are knits and purls to deal with I tested it out on the first couple of stitches and then promptly backed it out and did a three needle bind off instead.  My rationale was threefold:

1.  The grafting is fussy and I am impatient -- especially given that even a good nap time only gets me three hours.
2.  If I am not wearing the hood, no one will be at all paying attention to the seam.  And, on the rare occasion that I have the hood up, most people will not be staring down on my head, and, thus, also not paying attention to the seam.
3. The three-needle bind off results look quite good and don't (in my humble estimation) detract from the loveliness that is the cable work on the hood.

This seam does bring me to the completion of all the major knitting work.  Now it's on to the finishing.  And for the cardiganized Rogue, there is an extravaganza of finishing.  Left to do:

• Graft the back of the head stitches to the hood cable band.
• Block the body of the sweater out.
• Set in the sleeves.
• Attach the applied I-cord edging to the front edges.
• Sew in the remaining ends.
  
• Order and sew in the zipper. 

At the moment I'm in no real rush.  We've still got at least a week of unseasonably warm weather ahead (60 and 70 F weather in Chicago in November qualifies as unseasonably warm in my book -- not unwelcome, but definitely unseasonable) which means the pile of warm wool that is Rogue will not be welcome in my lap.   I've also become mildly obsessed with making toys... there will definitely be more discussion about that later this week.