Hubby's Sweater: Square One

Hubby is a bit distressed at the lack of progress on his sweater.

And believe you me, I'm right there with him.

sigh.

Part of the hold up is that I can't multitask when I'm seaming. When I'm knitting (or crocheting) I can sprawl on the couch and also watch TV with only occasional glaces down at my work. When I'm seaming I have to park myself at the dining room table and give the work my undivided attention. So I can either join Hubby in watching our TV shows or I can work on his sweater. I have not actually laid those choices before him. I wonder which he'd select?

Well, I better get cracking. Last night I told him it would be done by Christmas.

Two Sleeves Forward, One Step Back
I settled down last night to start sewing the sides together.

Things immediately went wrong when I couldn't line up the underarm area. If the points of the sleeves lined up the hem of the body didn't.

uh-oh.

I took a closer look and realized the points of the sleeve didn't land at the same spot on the front and back of the sweater. I tried to get a picture of it, but don't know if you can tell what is going on.

See, on the front of the sweater the sleeve ended on the third row of green. But on the back it ended on the eighth row of green. Which is a five row difference. There was no way to fudge it. If I proceeded, the sleeve seam would run along the side of the arm instead of under it.

This was the case on both sleeves.

I know how it happened. As I was attaching the sleeves the fabric slid and flexed and I just fudged it and kept sewing figuring it would all even out in the end.

I kind of forgot at the time that I was working on a drop-shoulder sweater and the sleeves had to land at the same spot on both sides.

The last few sweaters I made for myself had set in sleeves. Those were easier to fudge because I could see if they were coming out of line and it made more sense were I had to "ease them in."

Hmm, thinking about it, for those sweaters I think I started at each end of the sleeve and worked my way toward the middle, so all slack ended up at the top of the shoulder. On Hubby's Sweater I started at one end and worked straight across.

Take That You Curling Beast!
With a heavy heart I ripped the seams out. All my hard work over the weekend destroyed.

Then I dragged the sweater up the spare room, set the iron on wool, cranked the steam valve, and steamed the thing to death.

Yeah, you read that right, I blocked.

I have to imagine that part of the problem last time was that I was fighting the curl and couldn't see what I was doing.

I repinned the sleeves taking care to ensure the ends hit on the same rows this time.

(It was around this time Hubby came wandering in to see what was happening. I'm not sure whether he realized the sleeves were attached earlier in the evening and weren't any longer. I did tell him it was messed up and I had to start over. While I was talking he examined the ribbing, fingered the fabric remorsefully, then sighed and wandered away. That's when I promised it would be done by Christmas. I'm starting to see the wisdom of paying someone to do this bit.)

This time I started in the middle and worked my way toward the ends. My thinking was any slack will get pushed out evenly to the ends and keep the sleeve balanced.

I was able to mostly reattach one sleeve last night before bedtime.

Two issue have presented themselves.

1. Despite the fact that I'm reusing the piece of yarn from the first time around, it has run short. This is annoying because now I'm going to need two wee lengths to finish off both ends of the sleeve. This means more ends to weave in. grrr
2. There is a good chance the sleeve is once again going to hit on two different points. It might only be a row or two this time, which might be fine in the end. I'm really annoyed about it since I was being careful and don't know how it happened. I'm also debating whether I can fudge the short end by stretching or scrunching. sigh.

By then it was 10 pm, so I abandoned the sweater and went to bed. Well, not really. I let the dogs out, wrapped up the sweater and stuck it in the dining room credenza to keep it safe, let the dogs back in, then went to bed.

At this point, I think I'll work on the second sleeve tonight and see if I have better luck.

Maybe I should be using more pins.