the blue blog archives: reknitting the blues

As we recall, I decided to stay with the original pattern, changing only the sleeves to be knitted straight instead of bell sleeves. I finished the first sleeve (long and lean!) and was more concerned about the size of the sweater than the amount of yarn remaining. I seamed up front, back and the one sleeve to try it on and barely got the thing on over my shoulders. For some reason the pattern calls for the body armhole opening to be shorter than the sleeve caps. The sleeve cap is a nice length, but cinched up to match up with the body it makes the armholes way too tight. Very strange. So I ripped all three pieces back to the armholes (I guess can't stop ripping!) and rewrote the decreases so that armhole and sleeve cap match up and so that I have 8 more stitches extra all the way around. Now to reknit each piece according to the new numbers, seam them back together again and pray.

posted by alison at 8:17 am | in phildar folly

Comments

good luck with it alison, you're almost persuading me that losing my attempt at this sweater was a good thing!! Cant wait to see what it looks like with straight sleeves, are you still making the big collar?

Posted by: kerrie at February 6, 2004 8:30 AM

Good luck Alison, crossing my fingers that it works out with minimal knitting angst.

It will be worth it for sure! :)

Posted by: Leigh at February 6, 2004 8:32 AM

Good luck Alison! I just finished seaming a blue sweater too and the neck/shoulder area is too small! I'll be spending my weekend ripping it out and possibly knitting it on larger needles. Just when I thought the ripalong was over...

Posted by: Sara at February 6, 2004 8:41 AM

i am wondering if it's a phildar pattern issue because i felt the same exact way about the wannabe. you and leigh went up in size for the yarn so maybe it wasn't as noticeable. maybe all french women have tiny armholes? :)

Posted by: carolyn at February 6, 2004 12:31 PM

Argh! Sleeve cap problems are the worst, sounds like you got it beat though. Good luck!

Posted by: Silvia at February 6, 2004 2:06 PM

Oh yes, Kerrie, I think you might have escaped a little frustration!

Sending some good luck right back at you, Sara.

Carolyn, you're right, those Frenchy's must have skinny arms. I don't mind the snug upper sleeve thing, but this armhole was just crazy small and it didn't make sense to have it be sooo much shorter in the front. Very odd.

Sivlia, luckily the sleeves are raglan, so fixing the numbers wasn't too hard. The top of the raglan sleeve did include some decreases toward the front so I would expect the front to be a few rows shorter, but it didn't even match up with the front side of the raglan sleeve. A little error perhaps?

Posted by: alison at February 6, 2004 4:02 PM

Yes, in the picture the armhole looks disproportionately smaller than the neck hole. Good luck. I'm sure you'll figure it out.

Posted by: Stacy at February 6, 2004 4:05 PM

Hi Alison: sending you all the good knitting karma I can find.

Posted by: peggy at February 6, 2004 5:38 PM