That right there is my precious. My completed Irish Moss. 16 months of off-and-on (mostly on) work, about 1750 yards of cables, and my biggest WIP monkey off my back in time for Christmas (and only a year late). I was so excited to have it done that I took a photo right away, in the middle of the night, on my table that in the middle of the night is basically the same color as the sweater (in daytime, one is clearly grey and the other is clearly brown). And then I packed it up and shipped it off to my dad for his birthday, completely forgetting to take any other pictures (headdesk). I'm hoping to get some pictures of him wearing it that I can share with you . . . and I'm hoping that it fits!
I used the general cable patterns from Irish Moss, but I rearranged them to squeeze as many cables as I could into his size. Rather than using the pattern's sizing, sequence, and seaming, I knit this top-down in-the-round using the FLAK workshop instructions. I also did all of my cabling and stitch twisting without a cable needle. I cast the neck on provisionally so that I could continue the cables through the ribbing, and ended up making the neck ribbing twice as long as I wanted it to be and then folding it down and seaming. I love how the sweater turned out. I think theBrooklyn Tweed Shelter was a great choice because the cables jump out of the sweater, although I pulled a barn's worth of hay and other farmy stuff out of the yarn. I hope my dad loves it, because I think it is safe to say that I will never do this for anyone ever again. My hands revolted pretty much every step along the way, and I learned that my dislike for knitting cables is genuine and had nothing to do with an insufficiency of experience. I'm glad I made this for him to commemorate our trip, but next time I'll just give him a souvenir shot glass. ;)