Before I say anything else, let me just say that fall has arrived. At least in Toronto. Today is one of those glorious fall days with a wide open, deep blue sky and a true crispness in the air. It’s definitely chilly enough in the morning and in the evenings to wear a warm sweater and wish for mittens. It’s Toronto, so we probably (hopefully) haven’t seen the end of warm days for year, but still, it’s nice to be excited about the temperature dropping.

I was never this excited about cooler weather until I started knitting. It’s exciting.

Also exciting: Kimberly Wepplo (commenter #11) is the winner of the Lit Knits giveaway! Congratulations Kimberly! Please let me know how to get in touch with you so I can pass your contact info on to Audrey. You’ll have to let us know what you cast on for first.

This was my first giveaway and I just wanted to thank you all for your enthusiasm! Your comments about the book and its patterns were so much fun to read, and I especially liked that you encouraged each other to try patterns you liked that were a little out of your comfort zone. Audry has put together a gorgeous book, and if you would like your very own copy of Lit Knits, you can buy it either on her website or on Ravelry. There’s still time to get the sweet pre-order deal, that includes both a print and an e-book version – it’s only available until Sept. 25, so now is the time to scoop it up. (There are also still giveaways you can get in on. The blog tour list is here.)

In other news, Burrard is in its final stages, which is perfect, because I could really use a big cozy sweater right now. I blocked the body on the weekend while I was finishing up the arms, which I blocked yesterday. Now I’m sewing in my sleeve caps. These are my first set in sleeves, so I did a lot of reading about how to ease them in, how to seam, etc. If you too are wondering about seaming and/or setting in sleeves, the best resources I found were this Vogue guide to seaming (which covers a ton of different seams, with illustrations) and this Berroco video, which Cassy linked to a few weeks ago. My seams aren’t perfect, but you know what, they aren’t bad.

I’m hoping to finish the sleeve caps and get started on seaming the body tonight, but even once all the seaming is done, I’ll have the button band and shawl collar to pick up and knit. I was all set to pull this one out in time for the SSKAL deadline, but then I realized that we’re going camping this weekend (backwoods, canoe-in camping) and since there’s no way I’m bringing an unfinished sweater with me, I may have to resign myself to finishing a few days after the deadline. Since this still means I get a finished sweater by the end of next week, I’m not devastated, but it would be nice to make the deadline. Maybe if I don’t sleep quite as much? We’ll see.

So, any tips on seaming or setting in sleeves? Do you see a horrible error in my photo that my novice eyes didn’t catch? Please tell me! I promise a photo of a fully-seamed sweater later this week.