Well, I've been knitting along quietly over here...and...a couple of things happened. Initially splitting off the sleeves from the rest of the sweater went okay, but I cannot tell you how many times I knit and frogged that next row over...and over...and over...and over. After finally passing that point the realization came that when you haven't knit for a very long time, you often forget how tightly you knit. Um. right. So after splitting off the sleeves and knitting for awhile, it was clear that this sweater was in no way going to fit my chest. Sigh.
Frogging and some swearing commenced and thoughts of lighting the pile o yarn on fire began, so I put everything aside for a day. Things went much better the next time except even after counting every stitch after every other row, I somehow was TWO stitches short well into the body. TWO. I wanted to die. I sat there staring at it thinking about frogging again...but put it down and went to get a snack. Sure enough, I was missing the 2 stitches b/c well, I hadn't done the return row yet and those 2 stitches happened then. PHEW.
Since then, things have been going pretty well. One other thing that has been on my mind is the amount of yarn that I bought for the sweater. I always like to have an extra hank...b/c my name is Murphy. The problem with that is I bought the yarn at Madrona and they only had the amount that the pattern called for in my size. I've since called my LYS+ and um, they don't have the same dye lot. Getting nervous about this, I decided to stop working on the body of the sweater for a bit and move over to the sleeves. I'm pretty sure I have enough yarn to get through both sleeves and the collar and most of the body to the ending checker pattern. I figured that the ending checker pattern could be a different dye lot if necessary.
It really is a nice relaxing knit...but I really want to know whether people's arms are as long as the pattern thinks they are?! If I would have knit the amount of rows that it called for, I think the sleeves would be dragging to the ground.
Wow, it looks great, you almost have a sweater!
I'm glad you didn't burn it and I hope it hasn't put you off knitting.
Sleeves are really long these days. At least when you knit your own sweater you can get the length right, retail clothes have had ridiculous sleeves for a while now. I hope that 'style' goes away soon.
Posted by: KnittingInMind | Friday, 13 March 2009 at 08:05 AM