Why oh why does it seems like sleeves take forever? The back flew by, even with the couple of minor frogs I had to execute. If you’re not a knitter, a sentence reading “frogs I had to execute” could sound so sinister… For any laypeople or knitters assimilating new jargon, I mean that I had to rip out some of my knitting. “Frogging” is ripping out, “tinking” is un-knitting (and “tink” is “knit” backwards). I hardly ever tink unless it’s just one row, or lace. It’s just too slow.
Are you all sick of large swaths of stockinette yet?
Ok, back to the sleeves. They’re going, going. I added more stitches than I had originally factored in, because casting on 32 like I’d planned looked comically small. This means I will have to amend my sleeve cap shaping a bit, but I have faith it will all work out in the end.
I suppose I’m going to have to block and seam parts of this baby before I pick up and do the front band and the collar. Poor Matt will probably not get to wear this at all until next fall. I can’t wait to finish it, just to see how it looks on him and to make sure it’s actually going to fit him. On my previous post showing the fronts and the back-in-progress, I chuckled because several people mistook the fronts for sleeves or the whole thing for a baby sweater.
I’m really eager to block it, to prove to myself that the math is indeed going to work. If the fronts do end up too skinny, I can always add a little extra width to the button band to make up the difference.
As extra incentive, I’m going to cast on a Kenzo when I’m done!!! I think the gobs of amazing cables will keep my brain interested while I work with another 1200 yards of this same color. I will probably take my time with that baby, since she definitely won’t be worn until fall and Arkansas weather will soon grow too hot for me to want to work with worsted weight wool. I’m determined to have an Awkward Family Photo op with the matching colored family sweaters.
Gosh I much prefer tinking to ripping! I find it so annoying and cumbersome to get the stitches back on the needles after I rip. Usually, no matter how hard I try, they end up back on the needle the wrong way around (as if I had knitted them through the back loop), so I end up tinking another row anyway to rearrange the loops correctly on the needle…
Eh, I don’t mind that part so much. I just knit the backwards stitches through the back loop, which corrects them. I feel like it takes me three times as long per stitch to un-knit.
I call taking out knitting ‘tink~ing’ because it is actually ‘knit’ splet backwards. When I tell my family I am tinking they give me the supportive groan. …but executing frogs works too! 🙂
I nominated you for the Sunshine Award. I love your patterns and you make me want to be a better knitter. You can find the nomination at http://fusteratedreader.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/sunshine-award-what/
I completely agree with you that sleeves take far too long to finish. I’m working on a simple striped, top-down sweater, and the body flew by; it was finished in a two afternoons. The sleeves on the other hand… ugh, I’ve been working on the first sleeve for four days now.
Wow, that Kenzo pattern is INVOLVED! My brain hurts just looking at it! But yes, you guys definitely need to do some sort of weird, posed photograph when you’ve finished all the sweaters!