January 21, 2007

I finally got the darned thing finished up to putting in the sleeves! And in retrospect, I really fussed with it more than I needed to. It would have come out just fine if I'd have kept going. Oh well, live and learn. And to quote Hilde "Trust the pattern."

With that said, let me tell you how I changed the arm hole area. The actual pattern made absolutely no sense to me. So I figured I could use the concept used for an afterthought heel. Here's what I did. When it got time to set aside the sts for the sleeves, I grabbed a piece of waste yarn, knit across the prescribed number of sts for the arm hole, turn and knit back with the waste yarn. Then I picked up the working yarn and kept knitting, repeated for the second arm hole with another piece of waste yarn, and then knitted on to finish the circle. Today I'll go back, pick out the waste yarn, pick up the live sts on dpns, and make the sleeves. At least that's the plan. More on that tomorrow!

I've had this old sweater for many years. It's a cheapy machine knitted thing, but, hey, it keeps off the chill. However, the cuffs stretched out in the bag on the way home from the store. I wore it for years, rolling up the sleeves, and then rolling them up again ten minutes later. Then they'd fall when I pushed them up.

So, all the sudden it occurred to me that I could knit some cuffs on. I started the first time by picking up sts all around, but decided that was too tedious for this sweater. So I did a round of single crochet, then picked up the sts, and knit the cuffs. They are a little snug, and I can't push them up at all, but, I can wear the sweater without the cuffs falling over my hands. Maybe someday I'll frog them and do a better job.