Progress!

After playing with various elements on the Shearer sleeve over the weekend I arrived at something acceptable about 10:00 p.m. Sunday evening. Good thing too - I wasn't going to bed until it was sorted. This was guilt-based determination having spent what could have been valuable knitting time, instead yarn shopping over the weekend (Romni  - 2 visits and Eweknit) as well as working on a little project other than Shearer for a couple of hours Saturday night. I'll tell you it made the sort-out-the-sleeve-slog all that much more painful.

In the end, pushed through the "pain". Here's what I came up with...

• Sleeve cables nonsensically springing out of the purled section at the shoulder edge...picked up alongside the last knitted row, relegating the purl rows to inside, out of sight...also gave the cables visual breathing room by working one knit row before doing the set up for the cables on the next row.

• The pointed pucker at the shoulder seam generated by quickly starting with the central cable cross ... repeated the set up row 2 more times putting off crossing that first central cable cross until row 5.

• Excess fabric in the sleeves...cast on 10  fewer stitches and only worked 8 short rows, 4 per side, 5-7 stitches apart keeping the wraps "hidden" in the purled columns. (This, rather than short rows every row on more stitches as I did the first time through) I got 2" of extra depth for the shoulder by doing this while minimizing bunching of the bulky fabric under the arm and eradicating the resulting waviness on the sweater itself..

I've learned putting some daylight between sleeves and body (with narrower sleeves and higher armholes and sometimes, although, not in this case, waist shaping) breaks up the visual sense, in a bulky sweater, of one continuous mass from outside sleeve to outside sleeve. I want the "look" of the person wearing the sweater rather than the other way around. So I'm happy to now be working away at a slightly slim sleeve. This is also good for yarn conservation - still unsure about quantity but I'm cautiously optimistic.

Monday night at Craft Group (baking this month - Spicy-Gingery, Snappy, Ginger Snap Cookies) I was able to show the whole Shearer works off to very appreciative "audience" - don't you just love knitters? (And Crocheters!)

After that reception getting back "into" it full force was a little easier. I'll miss my December 1st goal but like the yarn, it will be close. I have a few Christmas season knits waiting in the queue - only one of them a Christmas Gift - and I am keen to get onto them (and off of this!)

Thanks for dropping by - knowing I needed to "report" on progress this week helped a lot with that weekend work at "pushing through the pain"!