Sleeve in Repose
Published February 7, 2010 by cheryl
I commented on Sil’s “Sleeve on the Ground” post the other day, and suggested this as an alternate title. Looks like I get to use it myself.
Sleeve number one of Shauna finished:
As you can see by the sleeve in profile, the sleeve width increases very rapidly (increasing 2 stitches every other row for the top part of the sleeve). I wondered why the sleeve was designed to be so wide at the top – about 4″ wider than I would normally have made a sleeve for a fitted sweater. But now that it’s done, I can see why. The cables on the sleeve are meant to match the cables of the body at the underarm. In order to make it smaller and still match up the cables, I’d have to lose two cables. Given how large the sleeve is at the top, I could probably have stopped the increases before adding the last two cables, and the sleeve would still be plenty large enough at the top for my arm – but then it might be more difficult to set into the armscye. It’s blocking now, so I’ll set it in (or at least baste it in place) and then decide if I want to try changing it.
It took as much time to knit this one sleeve as to do the whole body. I suppose that was partly because I had to start it on DPNs until it was big enough to switch to a 16″ circular, but mostly it was having to pay close attention to the charted increases. I also spent a lot of time knitting and reknitting to figure out how to do the increases – you have to do two increases in a row, with no stitch between. The pattern says to do M1’s (lifting the bar between the stitches and knitting into the back loop), but doing two of those in a row left a big hole below them. I finally decided to do a left lifted increase followed by a right lifted increase.
I also had a really hard time figuring out the start of the increases, and how that matched up to the chart (the chart only shows the increased stitches, not the rest of the sleeve). Maybe I was just being dense, but it took a long time before it sank in. Part of the problem is that the increases aren’t shown on the chart as increases – just as the stitch the increases are supposed to become (knit, purl, knit-in-the-back-loop, etc.) Then I realized that many of the increases were on rows where I would be increasing stitches at the same time as doing a cable across them. I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with that, so I ended up doing all of the increases one row early. Since that would have been a wrong side row if I’d been knitting flat, there were never any cable crosses.
Filed under Knitting
Cabled Sheep lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she enjoys knitting and munching veggies out of the garden.
Mind bending. But the sleeve looks great!
You do such a good job of interpreting patterns. The sweater is going to be fabulous!
The sleeve is lovely – all that cabley goodness.
Instead of starting the sleeve on dpn’s..(I hate them!), I use two circulars as it is much easier…then once big enough you can switch to one or just keep going on two!. Your sleeve looks nice and hopefully it will all fit well into the armscye once all is blocked and finished!
Very tricky–I can see that–but so worth it!
It’s a very pretty reposing sleeve. Much more refined than mine laying on the ground
That increasing conundrum is a bit annoying, as I’m guess the pattern had been test knit and holes should have been noticed. Luckily you were too experienced to get suck into the blind follower mode.
One of things I love about you is how you think everything through. Smartie!
The underside of that sleeve is amazing!