The hole - she is fixed

With lots of suggestions and help from friends near and in the blogosphere the hole has been fixed. Shan, my good friend Charlotte who inspired me continually, knittinghelp.com, other bloggers and Hollis all gave me really good suggestions and help and enabled me to pick the sweater up and do what needed to be done. She is not perfect, but only myself and a knitter (my husband can see it, but it does not bother him) can really tell the difference. I learned so much in fixing this hole.

It's really hard to tell because I am not a great photographer, but if you look closely, the cable on the left does not exactly match the cable on the right. The hole was in the cable on the left. I wound up unraveling those 4 stitches a few rows and EEK knotting the frayed yarn so it wouldn't continue to make the hole even bigger. Then it was a simple matter of picking up those 4 stitches on each side of the hole and knitting up. I was so freaked out that I did not do the cable - I just knit so this one cable is one twist short. After the knitting and the weaving in there were still "gaps" along the sides of the cable which were just sewed together. Now breathing has commenced!!
Another picture of the fixed place - it's a little easier to see that this part is a little wonky. One of the best pieces of advice came from Hollis. After speaking with Hollis and getting some tips, she said that if nothing else worked, I could just unpick the whole ribbing and then knit a new ribbing band from the sweater down. Of course it would have to be something like a 2X2 ribbing, but it would work. Well, that gave me a whole new outlook and an very uplifting feeling. Even if all the "fixes" I had learned did work, I could still just change the whole thing and salvage the sweater. Brilliant!!

Collar - complete!! It also has a facing which is already sewn down.

1st Sleeve - approx 5 inches of 17 complete!!

The biggest obstacle now is that I am seeing so many cute yarns and pattern out there it is hard to maintain momentum and not start something new!! Willpower is not a strong point here.