Good News and Bad News

The good news is that I blocked out the body of Shauna, and managed to get it to 33.5″. The yarn (and pattern) say to machine wash, put in the dryer for 15 minutes, then lay flat to finish drying. Instead, I just soaked it in Eucalan (in the washing machine), let it spin dry, and then pinned it out. I figured that would be the best way to maximize the width. Normally I just sort of “reshape” my sweaters and let them dry without any real blocking, but if I have to block this one each time it’s washed, it’s no big deal. Anyway, I feel pretty good about how it’s working out. Since the shoulders and collar aren’t finished yet (have to wait for the sleeves to be done, since they’re saddle-shoulders), I can’t really see for sure how it will fit when it’s completed, but at least it isn’t too tight.

The bad news is that I hurt my back (again) yesterday, so I’m not able to do much besides lounge around in the recliner. It was mostly my own fault – my back was a little stiff and sore in the morning, and I figured it was mostly because I had been so inactive while I was having all of those stupid headaches. I figured a light exercise/stretching session might help. BAD IDEA. Now I can barely walk. Sigh. Good thing I’m stocked up on muscle relaxants and pain killers.

On the other hand, there’s some good in it – I can’t do much else, so I guess I’ll just be forced to spend my time knitting. And since we’re such computer geeks over here, I can use my notebook computer to remotely access my desktop computer, all from the (relative) comfort of the recliner. (Sitting at my desk is totally out of the question.)

I’m working on the first sleeve of Shauna, and it’s slow going. I had a heck of a time figuring out the instructions/chart for the increases. It’s not that they’re wrong, they’re just hard to interpret. The chart is strange – all it shows are how the increase stitches are incorporated into the pattern – the chart isn’t for the whole sleeve, and doesn’t show where you actually do the increases. There’s also a bit of trickiness in how you set up the initial increases, which I didn’t understand at first. Or even at second.  But I think I have it all figured out now.

One thing I didn’t like is that you have to do two increases in a row, side-by-side. The pattern says to use M1, but I didn’t like how it looked to have two M1 stitches in a row – it left sort of an eyelet below them. I futzed with it for a while and tried a couple of different things, and finally decided that a set of paired lifted increases looked the best – so I’m doing a left lifted increase followed by a right lifted increase. So after much knitting and froggindpg (bad), I finally figured out how to do it (good). So now I’m on my way. The pattern calls for knitting the sleeves on 12″ circular needles, but I only have 16″ ones, so I’m working the sleeve on DPNs until I can get enough increases finished to change to the 16″ needle. I could do magic loop, but it would be kind of tricky with the cables and increases, so I think I’m better off with the sticks.

So if the muscle relaxants don’t put me to sleep, I should make good progress on the sleeve today.