Saturday, June 30, 2007

Sleeves are evil

My first sweater attempt, a seamless Aran (ambitious, I know) got stalled at the sleeves. I had trouble getting the decrease rate right. After three attempts, I accepted defeat and just put it aside. I really like the cabling and want to finish it, but the reality of Texas weather eats away at my motivation.

So, I looked for yarn that would be more warm weather friendly and found a couple of bags of discontinued Jaeger Trinity at a great price on ebay. I decided to keep things simple this time around and cast-on for an EZ seamless sweater from Knitting without Tears. Right now I'm thinking it will be the saddle-shouldered construction, but the recipe lets you put off that decision.

I was able to get through the body rather quickly--stockinette in the round is good for that. So quickly in fact that I didn't even cast-on for the first sleeve, as a recommended traveling project, until I had finished. Well, I'm about six inches in, and I hate this sleeve. Trinity has pretty poor stitch definition and counting rows between increases is a pain. And I can't seem to find needles I like. First I used a 16" circular as recommended, but I simply cannot stretch 8" of non-wool knitting that far. I switched to metal dpns, but now I am getting laddering. ARGH!

So, what do I do? Cast-on for something else, of course.

7 comments:

Nik said...

I love sweaters with saddle shoulders and can't wait to see what your sweater looks like.

Anonymous said...

There's always 12" circulars... or switching to bamboo DPNS, which might help keep your stitches still and prevent laddering.

(Just saw you blog through Ravelry)

-Dragonpaws

Jenn said...

Can't wait to see it! Also...just clicked on the "vase cozy" post through Ravelry...what an adorable dog!!!! :)
- Jenn
http://www.rhymeswithsocks.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

i'm doing saddle shoulder from the top down and it's a challenge.

Anonymous said...

Have you tried using two circulars? If nothing else, it eliminates two of the ladders, and if you switch over one stitch every time around, the ladders shift and it looks like a pattern. You can also go back later and twitch and shift tiny bits of yarn through stitches to even out the stitch sizes. And finally, EZ points out that after a few years, the ladders even out anyway.

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