My Frankenstein Sweater

I call it Frankenstein because my sweater was made up of many different patterns all flung together. It all began when I was searching the internet, and somebody linked this, saying that they had to have it, and was willing to make it themselves if anybody had the pattern. Well, when I saw the cabled skull design, I thought it was the coolest thing ever too, but there was no way I was going to shell out $1,000+ for it (there was no sale for it yet at the time, but even so I wasn't going to pay that amount of money). So, with a little more digging, I found this amazing person that posted the skull pattern. Awesome, I thought, this is what I'm going to make next. And with that, I bought this:

Those lucky balls of yarns is going to give birth to my cabled skull sweater! So, as I was about to get to work, I realized something. Oh shit, the person only provided the skull pattern, and nothing else. And also .. I never made a sweater before. So, what to do. Okay, no problem, I'll just go online, and use another sweater's pattern as the base and guideline of how to make a sweater. And so, I found this sweater pattern, chosen because its' design is similar to the back of the original Alexander Mcqueen sweater so I can just use it for the pattern at the back of my sweater.

As I was about to start knitting, I realized another dilemma. The guideline sweater pattern is made with dk weight yarn, and I bought worsted weight. At this point, I could feel the dust flying off my brain as the wheels in my head began to turn. Alright, I'll just find a random worsted weight sweater pattern online and see how much stitches they used to cast on. I also needed to make up a pattern for those cabled rings that run alongside the skull which you can see in the original. So after a bunch of copy and pasting, modifying and adjusting, I finally started knitting. You can see how I organized everything and had my own crudely made paint chart next to the neat skull chart provided by the website I found.

After lots and lots of cable work, I was finished with the front! I moved onto knitting the sleeves. It took me a long time to find sleeves that I thought would fit best with my Frankenstein and I wanted everything to be perfect. Using this, I began my sleeves. For some reason, I'm really fond of the seed stitch, so I chose to use that instead of the stockinette stitch that the sleeve pattern suggested.

After casting off the sleeves, I began the back. I had to modify the pattern slightly though, because since the pattern was written for dk weight, it originally told me to CO 146 stitches. However, my sweater only casted on 108 so out of the 4 charts one would be following in theirs, I only followed 2 charts in mine. I went in not quite sure how the end product would look like, but I think it all worked out for the best:

 

Having the back finished means I was done all my pieces! Wow, that only took about one and a half months.. Anyway, Frankenstein pieces, assemble!

As I sewed everything up, I began to have mixed feelings. Negative feelings because I knew I would soon have to weave in ends which I hate. Positive feelings because, wow I was about to reach what in my head felt like a knitting milestone!! After sewing everything up, I almost forgot to knit my collar which you can see me doing here:

When I was done, I was super excited! The only living thing around however was my dog  (it was nighttime approximately 2am). She didn't wake up when I shook her to try to wake her up though. I was a bit disappointed I couldn't share my excitement with anybody until the next day (which I wore to work to get some compliments, haha)! It wasn't too bad though. My dog gave me a laugh because it looks like she's trying to do the Michael Jackson Thriller dance in her sleep.

Tl;dr: