The Problem With Finishing

I'm knitting myself a Farmer's Market Cardigan. When I look at the photos of completed ones on Ravelry, I can nearly feel my hands snuggling in the pockets as I hug it around me. The best word for this cardigan is cozy.*

I'm using Juniper Moon Farm's Moonshine yarn, a delicious blend of 40% alpaca, 40% wool, and 20% silk. The whole thing is going along just swimmingly.

Except.

The finishing section of this pattern is approximately 1/3 of the pattern. Once the front and back (which are knit as one piece to the armholes), the pockets, and the sleeves are knit, it's all blocked. Then there's sewing. So much sewing.**

And the lovely edging--the most distinctive piece of the design--is knit in pieces and sewn to the body of the sweater a bit at a time.

It's a lot of sewing, to be sure. More than that though, it's discouraging to reach the portion of the pattern marked "finishing" and see that clearly you are miles away from actually finishing. As Inigo Montoya would say, "I do not think this word means what you think that it means."

Finishing in knitting can be a lot--seaming, button bands, zippers, sewing on buttons, adding a shawl collar, etc., etc., etc.

So, I'll keep going--my eyes on the prize of a snuggly sweater at the end of all this. But in my head, I reserve the word "finishing" for washing, blocking, and maybe a tiny bit of seaming. The section I'm hoping to start in a few days? I'm going to call it 

BITS THAT MAKE THIS SWEATER AWESOME.

It's going to catch on with designers. I'm confident of it.

*It's a testament to how many British books I read that I had to really think about whether that was spelled with a "z" or a "s".

**Is there ever a good reason for sleeves to be knit flat instead of in the round? Do they really grow that much that it is a concern? I don't know, which is why I'm knitting them flat as directed, but I resent it.