DesigKnit

I think my knitting may be jealous of the time I’m spending with other crafts.

I’ve been working quietly away on the sleeve for the Embroidered Sweater, which has been growing very slowly due to small needles. I seem to have forgotten how to knit sweater sleeves lately: they haven’t gone smoothly the first time in the last few sweaters that I’ve knit.  This time, the trouble started when I picked up stitches and knit the sleevecap while my brain was still mushy from work. I simply forgot the sleevecap shaping.

No problem, I thought. I snip and graft all the time, and I’ll just do an afterthought sleevecap to add a little shape at the end. That was perfectly fine.

Then, I cast on the wrong number of stitches for the rest of the sleeve, despite having counted twice. (I always knit my sleeves in two parts, so that I can do a top-down, set-in sleeve and not have to carry around the sweater. I just graft them back together at the end.) Instead of 135 stitches, I cast on 85.

No big deal, I said. I’ll just decrease normally until I get to 85 stitches, and piece on the last 4 inches closer to the cuff.

Well, when I got to full sleeve length without reaching 85 stitches, I started to get concerned. The sleeve was looking awfully wide. I went back and looked at the sweater body, and the sleeve did match the sweater body. But it was still awfully wide. Like flying squirrel underarm wide.

Long story short, last night I ended up ripping back the entire sleeve and both sleevecaps and picking up stitches again. This time, I started out with 105 stitches, remembered the sleevecap shaping, and it appears that the new sleeves will be much closer to human proportions.

The bright side is that the new sleeve will have 20% fewer stitches in it, and (I think) the sleeve is now back to mindless/endless knitting stage, just in time for my fall commute to begin tomorrow. Has to count for something, right?