Stella: Second Sleeve Slip-ups

The Tartan Socks continue to languish. I'm really leaning toward frogging them and following a traditional argyle construction. Although maybe I should soldier on for the good of the wider knitting community.

There is that rule of thumb: As long as we're knitting, we're happy.

Pair of Sleeves
This is all good news for the Stella sweater.

I finished the second sleeve last night. Mercifully, it looks like the first one, which was in some doubt for a while there.

First I had trouble transitioning from the pleats to the smocking.

You decrease a number of stitches as you work the smocking set up row. Well, I hadn't worked all my decreases and ran out of stitches.

I thought I had front loaded them too much, so pulled it out and started again. No dice.

The first sleeve was not so tricky. I examined it, counted spacing, and even put safety pins on the decreases to they would be easier to see/count as I worked the second sleeve.

Still didn't work.

Finally I had the brilliant idea of counting the number of stitches with which I was starting.

Yep, not enough.

I told Hubby I didn't know what we were watching when I worked that last row, but I messed up big time. I worked all the pattern decreases without the paired increases. sigh.

So I had to pull out 3/4 of that row and rework it. Obviously, the set up/decrease row worked fine after that.

Cap It
The smocking and most of the main sleeve section went fine until I reached the last set of decreases in the shaping.

You decrease every other row X number of times. My plan was to advance my row counter only on the right side/decrease rows. Turns out I started automatically advancing after every row. I arrived at what should have been the last decrease row, according to the counter, but I had waaay to many stitches.

I had to sit there, reading my knitting, counting decreases and making sure both sides were even. sheesh. At least I didn't have to pull anything out.

But then the penultimate direction was to decrease 2 sts at the BEG of the next two rows. I however decreased 2 sts at BOTH ends of the next two rows. And couldn't figure out why I was waaaay short on stitches. I figured that gaff out much more quickly.

You can see why I'm happy the sleeves match!

As soon as I finished the sleeve I cast on for the back. I was able to knit two rows before bedtime. I'm really surprised/excited at how quickly this top is moving along. I just have to stay focused.