Immie-done.

Breathing a sigh of relief over finishing this one. I had my doubts that I would get it sorted out with the sleeve issues I was having. A re-occuring theme on this blog! Sleeves kill me.

As you can see below, I ended up having to modify things because I used thicker yarn and also had less yarn than I initially thought. As a result I had to fiddle with the final decreases in the neckline and fudge where the pattern ended. Not an ideal solution, but made it work …after 3 tries! You can see how the raglan decrease starts to go up straight on the last 10 or so rows in the photo below:

Luckily this isn’t  as noticeable when it is on:

(Some of you might recognise the lip position I am doing above… a somewhat modified ‘Lucy Lip-point’!).

I also had to re-do the bind off as I used a yarn over bind off to begin with (left below) and it was flappy and loose. I ended up using a K2tog bind off which looks nice with the garter. There it is on the right before blocking:

and after:

Next up – Sleeves – otherwise known as A World Of Pain.

As I was quickly running out of cashmere (from the bought sweater I frogged, and had no idea how many yards it contained, so then naturally cast on with too small needles! Dork.), I decided the best way to deal with the sleeves would be to cast on stitches at the yoke join, as I learned to do in my Owls cardi, and then knit down until I ran out once the body was already finished.

A FANTASTIC idea in theory, this would have worked out brilliantly if I hadn’t overestimated how large I needed the armholes to be (due to the opposite problem in the previous project). So of course I knit ages of armage before realising/admitting they were huge and sloppy and just wouldn’t do. So I frogged. Again.

I had to do some serious decreasing at the back that I was sure wouldn’t work, but in the end they did the job and aren’t too noticeable.

The last bit of suffering…on trying it on at what I thought was the end, I realised it was a titch short. So I attempted to frog back and knit the pattern the opposite way around. Which you think would be straightforward. But wasn’t. Sigh.

I couldn’t seem to pick up the right number of stitches no matter how hard I tried. I kept missing a YO or something. After frogging back 3 rows of pattern and not getting it, I gave up and added a thick garter border to match the sleeves. Design-wise it is probably more coherent this way in the end, but it does change the delicate look of the intended sweater.

As a result, the sweater feels a bit clunky to me. But, to be positive, as my first hardcore lace chart project, it is a decent result.

The cashmere is super warm and bloomed beautifully when I steamed. I actually went over it with the steamer after wet blocking to get the halo fluffed up! I say actually because I am usually not one for halo, but I realised with this project that my negative association with it is from the kind of fluffy angora mess that ends up in your eyes and nose – which I HATE. If something is fluffy but not sheddy, I like it fine!

Here is a close up of furry goodness:

Things I have learned from this project:
1. I can do lace – but dense lace. Thin lacey patterns are still too hard for me to read and sort out mistakes along the way.
2. I should probably do provisional cast ons when knitting from bottom up from now on! Save me so much time.
3. For god’s sake, stop second guessing sleeve hole size!!! Trust my gauge.
4. Bigger sleeve holes are still better than too small…
😉

 

 

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