Saturday, May 10, 2008

Starting The Sleeves

By Leigh

The Shetland Sampler Cardigan sleeves are officially begun!

The first thing I did was to click on over the The Knitting Fiend's online Sleeve Increase Calculator. By plugging in the number of rows to be knitted and the number of stitches in the first and last rows, instructions for the sleeve increases were automatically calculated for me. Here's what I got (click on the photo for an enlargement).

Should enlarge if you click the image

My next stop was Lucy Neatby's website to double check the instructions for the Siamese Sleeves.

Since I am knitting both sleeves at once, I had to double the number of stitches to cast on and add steeking stitches between the sleeves. This number of stitches was cast onto my 16 inch US2 circs with waste yarn (see "A Shetland COWYAK")

After a couple of rows of waste yarn, I started knitting with the yarn for the sleeves. I decided that I'd better use stitch markers to mark the beginning and end of both sleeves "just in case."


As long as I keep track of which row I'm on to get the increases properly placed, I should have properly fitting sleeves.

The other thing I've started on is the steeks for the armholes. These are technically checkerboard steeks, though as I mentioned before, the checkerboard effect is lost with the one color rows. The blue yarn marks the beginning of the steek, which is six stitches wide.

Wool Enough commented that the pattern appears to have black faced white sheep facing a brown fence. Can you see it? I'm delighted with that observation because like her, I too am rather wool obsessed!


Related Posts:
Ready to Start Those Sleeves - Discovering Siamese Sleeves
A Shetland COWYAK - Casting on with waste yarn.
Siamese Sleeves Done!
SSC Sleeves & Cuffs
Shetland Sampler Cardigan Complete!

6 comments:

Sheepish Annie said...

I know I say, "wow" a lot when I read your posts, but I am often at a loss for words. Which, you probably realize, is something that doesn't happen all that often in my real life. That sweater is simply genius!!! Wow!!

Helen said...

That's mean I was going to say "wow" too. Now I dont know what to say-its jsut amazing the range of delicate colours and the patterns and it is all so beautifully put together! "wow"!

Anonymous said...

Leigh, you have such a wonderful eye for design. The sweater is outstanding.

Love the siamese sleeves idea! I enjoy fair isle knitting, and that idea just rocks. Thanks for providing the link.

Cut my stain scarf off of the loom yesterday, and finished it up today -- will post photos later, as I'm waiting for my camera battery to recharge. Naturally, I'm immediately in the process of planning my next project! :-) Am so loving the Baby Wolf.

Cheers,
Jane

Sharon said...

Oh they do so look like black-faced white sheep. What a good eye! I saw the steeked sleeves on the Soxchik blog and knew that I'd have to do that next sweater. Even with two sleeves on needles at once, I get side tracked and turn back on the first instead of going on to the second one. That's for the sleeve shaper link - I'll bookmark it for sure.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the link to the sleeve increase calculator. I have not seen that before.

bspinner said...

The sleeves are going to be great. Thanks for the link for the sleeve calculator. I haven't seen it before.