Hubby's Sweater: Sleeve Island

Actually, I only just started the sleeves and I'm not tired of them yet, so perhaps it's not Sleeve Island.

At what point do you land on Sleeve Island? Are there guidelines?

Anyway, what you see here, at a really bizarre angle it turns out, is the front (and back!) of Hubby's Sweater. yippee!

It's laying on a stack of patio cushions in the Green Room in front of the glass doors. I thought it would get good light there, but the flash still went off.

So I finished the front on Sunday, I believe, and jumped into the sleeves.

Modification
I've made a change to the pattern. Just a minor one. I'm using a 3-needle bind off on the shoulders instead of sewing them.

I was supposed to bind off all the stitches when I finished the back. Instead, I knit an extra row, then cut the yarn, picked out that last row, and left the live stitches on a holder. I did that to make sure I had enough yarn attached to it. Then when the front was the matching length I used a DPN as my extra needle to 3-needle the right shoulder. Then I bound off the center back stitches, leaving the other shoulder stitches on both front and back live.

The collar is picked up and worked flat. I'm half tempted to close that other shoulder so I can work the collar in the round. Hubby wants a mock turtle neck. I figure the length (height?) will be easier to judge if he can actually try it on.

Maybe I can pick them up flat, then close the shoulder and join to work in the round. Hmm.

Color Ratios
For the cuffs, I have knit the ribbing for one then jumped ahead to knit the ribbing for the second one right away. Remember I had debated knitting all the ribbing at once? I didn't. It has gotten easier with each piece, so there wasn't a need.

I'm doing it for the cuffs because I'm rather concerned about running out of the charcoal grey.

The last time I was at the store I confirmed we're out of the charcoal grey #1469. All we had was #1468. It is a smidgen lighter. The other two staff members agreed that it was weird we would have two such similar colors. But I had to get it because I need to finish the sweater. My hope is that it will be in the sleeves and with all the other colors it won't be noticeable. And, really, what choice did I have?

Well, I could have forced the situation by asking Cynthia to order more of the color I needed, but then the dyelot probably wouldn't match. And I didn't want to wait.

My plan is to use the 1469 in the cuffs and collar and 1468 as the stripes in the sleeves. The colors are awfully close, but I wouldn't want to run out mid stripe and have to mix them.

For most of the colors I bought two balls of yarn. For the charcoal grey I'd bought four. I think I didn't notice that there were two different charcoals when I originally bought the yarn (which shows you how similar they are) or I would have gone with the one we had more of. When we redid the stripe sequence I ended up with three balls each of the black/white and maroon.

As I've been watching the colors deplete I've realized I probably won't need three each of those. I'll probably just use the two. What I need is more tan/white.

My plan over the weekend was to swap the third balls of maroon and black/white for a charcoal and a tan/white. But after I did that I realized my discarded black/white was the last one in the store. What if I suddenly needed it?! So I took it back. Then I thought since I was keeping that one I should keep the maroon one as well. Then I noticed that after I bought one each of the charcoal and tan/white there was only one of each left in the store. What if I needed them as well?!

In the end, instead of swapping two for two with no financial investment, I bought four more balls of yarn.

sigh.

One of the other staff members reminded me that Zara is a great yarn and even if I have leftovers it will be easy to use and good to have in stash. That amused me greatly, since I say similar things to customers when I'm encouraging them to buy a spare ball. It's a safety net.

Of course, you only have to run out of yarn once to be more than willing to buy a spare ball (or four).