Tag Archives: sleeve

Choices 2020

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I’ve got a dilemma.

It’s a dilemma of my own creation, because I insisted on making a sweater without actually having a plan.  I should have had a plan.

I really should have had a plan.

Now I have… this:IMG_2909

Possibly the world’s least-flattering sweater.

Ignore the sleeve situation for a second, and let me walk you through what happened.

My original thought was to knit up a stash-busting sweater using the lace-weight alpaca that I’ve had in my stash for literal years.  I love all the colors, but haven’t had the time/energy for lace since… the early 2000s.  I actually knit up a swatch with the yarn held triple, and it seemed like it was going to work.  The first plan was to make a cropped, over-sized sweater, in the vein of the Love Note.  Super cute and trendy.

Well, I got carried away (a combination of quarantine blues and some good Netflix shows), and before I knew it, I had a hip-length sweater.  Not what I planned, but hey, that’s ok.

I tried it on.  It fit… well enough.  Even though I did a swatch, I forgot to factor in the inherent drapiness of alpaca.  It’s really kind of shapeless and droopy.  Don’t get me wrong… it’s real comfortable and soft, but not the most flattering thing ever.

It was time to tackle the sleeves.  My first thought was to just make it into a T-shirt- something trendy and cute, and something I could wear sooner than later with summer on the way.  I threw a quick short sleeve on the sweater.  I tried it on…

Y’all.  It was so wide across the shoulders (WAY too many raglan increases), that the armpit hits just a couple inches above my elbow.  It looks OK enough if I keep my arms down, but if I lift them up, I get a weird bat-wing look (and not in a good way).

So, I decide to make the other sleeve long.  I use my usual long sleeve formula,  and make it up in a weekend.

I’ve got big hopes.  I try it on.  Ugh.

It’s… fine, but way baggier than I hoped.  If I really want the sweater to be how I’m now imagining it, I have to rip it all the way back past the armpits and try again, and I’m just not feeling that now.

So, I’m asking you:  What should I do?

Long sleeve? Short sleeve?  Re-knit the long sleeve so it’s narrower?  Give up and walk around with one long sleeve like a crazy person?  Give up entirely?

IMG_2921

(Don’t mind my dog and my kid barking at the cars driving by…  It was a day.)

Have you ever gotten almost to the end of a project, just to realize you did it all wrong?

Not So Magic

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I’m cruising along with my little Flax Light.  (It’s a refreshing change from gigantic sweaters and blankets, but it’s a little sad that it’s so much bigger than the kiddo’s other sweaters… Slow down, little dude!)

I worked up the ribbed hem and bound off the body while watching last week’s episode of The Bachelorette.  (Not the show I’m proudest of, but you gotta have something silly to watch from time to time.)  The sweater is turning out so cute!  I love the little shoulders and the neat little hem.  And this color is going to be so flattering on the kid.IMG_1798I still had a half-hour left of my show, so I decided to grab some DPNs and get to work on the sleeves.  But horror of horrors, apparently I don’t have any US6 DPNs.  I’ve got 3 sets of 5’s, 2 sets of 7’s, and just about any other size I could want, but not a 6 in sight.  How does this happen?  I’ve been knitting for more than two thirds of my life. Why don’t I have any 6’s?

But, no fear, I can rally.  I’m a knitter and knitters are nothing if not resourceful.  I pulled out one of my long US6 circulars to start doing magic loop.  Sure, I wasn’t a fan of it years ago when I tried it last, but maybe I’ve matured as a knitter.  Maybe I’m open to other ways of knitting.  Maybe it’s after 9 and JoAnn’s is closed and I have no other choice.IMG_1808Well, I made it about a half an inch before giving up.  Good God, magic loop is annoying.  The more power to you, if that’s what works for you.  I’m glad there are different techniques for different people, but this one is definitely not for me.  I don’t know why, but there is something that just drives me up the wall about wrangling that big old cable, and futzing with moving my stitches back and forth.  Maybe there’s some “flow” thing that I’m just not getting, but at least for now, nope.  Magic loop is definitely not for me.

I guess I’m taking a trip to the craft store this afternoon.

Are there any techniques that you just can’t stand?  Have you ever tried something new  and “noped” right out of there?

On My Sleeve

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It’s happening!  I’m actually doing it!

The sun is shining a little bit brighter and the birds are singing a little bit louder!

It’s a new era!

The Papaya Sweater has half a sleeve!It’s so exciting to finally be making headway on this project- I’m actually starting to believe that I will finish it at some time in the next decade.

Unfortunately, the sleeve is a little less tapered than I initially envisioned/hoped for.  But, I can’t bring myself to rip out those precious inches of sleeve and re-knit them at a faster rate of decrease.  I’ll just let it go, and hope it’ll block out. After all, that kind of “mistake” is never something that other people notice, it’s something that only the knitter herself picks up on.

Are you making any headway on any of your projects?

OK. New Plan.

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I’ve finally got my act together.   I’ve sulked long enough, and I think I figured out a solution.  I think I can make this sweater work.  I’ll live to knit another day.

But first, I had to rip an entire sleeve.  It was… an unfortunate amount of ripping.   I poured myself a nice stiff drink and went to town.

God… look how different that yarn is.  (New yarn is on the right, old, scraggly yarn is on the left.)OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI remembered someone telling me, or maybe reading somewhere (not sure where… I just know I didn’t make this up), that if you had two different dye lots that you had to make work, you can work them in stripes to blend the two colors together.  It was worth a shot.

First I tried 2-row stripes, but that ended up looking really stripey.  (I didn’t even bother taking a picture of this one- it didn’t look good.)

But, when I tried narrow, 1-row stripes, I managed to get a pretty even color.  And, since I’m using a big circular needle, I can slide the needle back and forth after every other row.  That means I don’t have to break my yarn or juggle extra balls of yarn!  Winning!OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASee?  The sleeve (the bottom portion of the picture) is pretty close to the rest of the sweater.  It’s still a smidge blue-ish in real life, but only so much that someone looking really closely would notice it.

The only problem is that the combination of new yarn and old, frogged yarn makes the fabric a bit of a mess.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERABut at this point, I’m just going to cross my fingers and hope that it looks OK after blocking.

Have you ever had to get creative to get around poor dye-lot matching?

Husband Sweater: The Sleeves

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I think it’s high time that this dang sweater stops looking like a muscle shirt when my husband tries it on.  Don’t you agree?

The only problem is that he’s not a fan of the fairly over-sized sleeves that the original pattern calls for.  Ugh.  Nothing is ever simple.

So, it’s time to get out my scratch paper (or rather, the back of the pattern), my calculator and start figuring out what I need to do.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOK.  Before I even have to start doing math I know a few things:

1.  I have 82 stitches (about 20 inches) at the top of the sleeve, set aside from when I split the body for sleeves.

2.  I need to get down to about 40 stitches (about 10 inches) at the top of the cuff.

3.  My sleeve needs to be about 15 inches (about 105 rows) from where I’ll pick up my stitches to the top of the cuff.  (I based this on my husband’s arm length, and the length of the sleeves of his favorite sweater.)

Now it’s math time.

If I need to go from 82 to 40 stitches, I need to do 42 decreases somewhere on the sleeve.

(82 sts at the shoulder-40 sts at the cuff=42 decreases)

I’ll do two decreases per decrease row, so I’ll need to do 21 decrease rows.

(42 decreases/2 decreases per row=21 decrease rows)

And, I want to space those decreases out evenly over 105 rows, so I’ll work a decrease row every 5th row.

(105 rows/21 decrease rows=5 rows per decrease row)

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASo that means, I’ll knit four rows evenly (while still making sure the stripe pattern matches up with the body), then I’ll work a decrease row (knitting all stitches, except for working two decreases at the underarm).  Easy!

Hopefully, this’ll look good.  It’s a more extreme decrease than I usually use for sleeves, but it might work.  Luckily, I’ll be able to finish one sleeve, have the husband try it on, and get his approval for the next sleeve (or, heaven forbid, find out I have to redo the sleeve!  Cross your fingers for me).OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAHave you ever had to rejigger part of a pattern?  How did it turn out for you?