Shauna Progress

I made great headway on Shauna during the Las Vegas trip. The body is nearly done.

But she’s got me a little worried. Well, maybe more concerned than worried.

(“I wasn’t nervous. Maybe I was a little bit ‘concerned’ but that’s not the same thing.” Name that movie.)

The finished circumference is supposed to be 34.75″, which is what the manufacturer’s sample measured – the one I tried on that was a perfect fit.

Mine currently measures 30″.

Now, I do expect that it will grow when it’s washed and blocked, but from my swatch, I was only expecting to get maybe 2″ of growth widthwise. I’m sure I can probably stretch that a bit, but 4.75″? That’s asking a lot.

Currently it’s pretty form-fitting rather than body-skimming, which is what I had in mind. But I’m going to go ahead with it. Once I have the body done, I’ll block it and see how it fits before I start on the sleeves. Knitting the next larger size would undoubtedly be too big – probably not too big to wear, just as this probably won’t be too small to wear, but just not quite what I expected.

I knew I should have dashed out of the store wearing that sample! Even then, I figured mine would probably not come out fitting exactly the same. But then, who wants theft on their rap sheet?

Seriously, though, I do think it will probably work out fine, even though it might end up slightly smaller than I expected. It’s very stretchy.

The other concern I have about it is the sleeve width. The size I’m making has a sleeve width of 15.75″. My upper arm measures 11″. That’s nearly 5″ of positive ease for the sleeves. Even for outerwear, I don’t think I’ve made a sleeve width greater than 13.5″ for anything.  I checked the math, and their width looks correct for the number of stitches, so I don’t think there’s an error. But the sleeves don’t look overly large on the few finished sweaters I’ve seen, and I don’t remember anything strange about the sleeves on the sample I tried on. I wouldn’t want the sleeves to be stretched over the arms, so maybe having them be a little looser is good. And since my gauge is evidently off, the sleeves won’t be as wide as that anyway (plus, I can just be careful not to block them out widthwise). I’m going to just go on faith that they’ll be right.

Oh, and for the sharp-eyed among you, the center cable pattern does change at the top after the split for the armholes.