Arm Wrestling

Mistakes were made—that much is clear.  You will see the brighter side of the situation because you believe life gets better as we learn from our past follies and grow beyond them.   

This was the newspaper horoscope that greeted me this morning—eliciting a wry grin as I thought last night’s fruitless session trying to get the snowflake pattern to align on Sirdal’s sleeves.  The knitting gods must also control the stars and planets because the first sentence is sadly true—and it has been for weeks.  As for the rest of the horoscope, I ought to earn a Ph.D. as I crawl up the learning curve in the quest for error-free sleeves.

I had hoped by now to have a post that showed a picture of me smiling and holding up one, if not both, of Sirdal’s finished sleeves and proudly proclaiming that I was ready to steek the sweater.  But the sleeves have proved to be a challenge.

I knew from the start that I was in for trouble because the sleeve chart seemed to omit the row of snowflakes that grace the bottom edge of the body and that are shown in the photo of the adult cardigan.  The written instructions that accompany the chart are even more confusing because they’re divided into a sentence about adding a decorative ribbon (which I’m not using) or knitting the sleeves without the ribbon.  So even though, for one fleeting moment, I thought I could manage without recharting the sleeves, I had second (third, fourth, fifth...) thoughts.

The sleeve hurdles are these:

• The cuff is not ribbed.  It is arranged like a blouse cuff, with an overlapping flap that has button holes, and it has a small facing that will be hemmed in finishing.  The cuff (the wheel motif) is knitted on smaller needles, and when you’re done with that motif, you have to reposition the cuff it so that the flap part falls at your outer wrist bone, and then center the chart motif so it goes up the center of the cuff and center of the sleeve.  In effect, you attach the yarn at the middle of your wrist and start the rounds at that point, not at the edge of the cuff (as feels “so right” but is “so wrong”).
• The original pattern is too big for me, and so in cutting it, I had to cut complete motifs, not work with a percentage of the number of cast-on stitches.  This also necessitated redoing the cuff chart more times than I can count.
• The original pattern has you knit the cuff and then increase 10 stitches.  This made the cuff balloon out and the increases messed up the stranded design.
• The cuff is knitted flat, and so it required stranding backward—although I have gotten quite good at this, having practiced it so often.

Here is how I figured all this out:

First try:

Here you can see that the cuff is too big, the bottom motif doesn’t align with the snowflakes, the cuff billows out because of the 10 increased stitches, and the increases chop up the line of white stitches.

Second try:

This one was abandoned after one night of knitting.  I tried to adjust for the billowing cuff and ended up with one that was too small.  I even basted the bottom facing to be sure, and I discovered that the facing reduces the elasticity of the cuff.

Third try:

Here I tried to increase the number of stitches to fix the problem of a too-tight cuff in Try #2, using the number of stitches in the original pattern, but knitting with smaller needles.  I decided to decrease evenly up the sleeve, rather than add 10 stitches right over the cuff (one of the revised charts shows this increasing).  The result is ok, but the cuff is too big.

Fourth try:

You can note some obvious progress: the cuff is the right size.  I cut one motif from the third try and used smaller needles.  But it isn’t perfect: When I repositioned the cuff to center it, I some how messed up and the motifs are no longer lined up.

So where am I now?  I’m about to frog Try #4 to the first row of solid white stitches and center the cuff.  Everything else (dare I say it?) seems ok, and I’ve checked and rechecked the “final” chart—so it is correct. 

So tune in next time to see if Try #4 ½ gets me a sleeve that works and if "I can learn from my past follies."  

 

Comments

[Dorothy]

I give you huge points for perseverance. My head hurts just thinking about all those calculations!

[Caroline M]

Knitting - such a relaxing hobby.

[Lorette]

Caroline's comment was just what I was going to say. I've got matches and some lighter fluid if you want to immolate that thing in the back yard. I've found that threats of that nature occasionally help.

[Linda M]

Amazing! When you get this finished it will be a masterpiece. If you have any interest in selling your notes and charts I'm sure there will be many takers!