Green Schleppy: Join Sleeves to Body

The Green Striped Schleppy Sweater is back in play.

Have I mentioned the Green Schleppy to you? Oh, once, back in April to complain about the sleeves.

I started this sweater during my single ball, striped project, hoard wrangling phase several months ago. Specifically February.

I'm following the pattern for the Schleppy Sweater I designed for myself last year.

Wow, was that already a year ago?

Anyway.

The idea was to use up many single balls of green yarn I have. The stripes on the body are each 15 rows. The mess up on the sleeves came because I didn't account for the fact that the sleeves were going to have more rows than the body and didn't plan to make the sleeves stripes either narrower or wider to account for that fact.

Nope, the sleeve stripes are each 15 rows as well.

This led to me working through the stripe sequence and coming up short on length. After pouting over it for a bit I decided to restart the sequence and also accelerate it to get the top of the sleeves on the same yarn as the top of the body when I joined them.

I think it will be fine.

Entrelac. Are You Insane?
Since I knew from the cast on that I probably wouldn't actually have enough of the green yarns to finish the sweater I also selected two blue yarns for the yoke.

I figure it's the yoke, it can break from the rest of the sweater.

Then in March I came across Meg Swansen's article in the Holiday 2010 issue of Vogue Knitting about working an entrelac yoke.

This seized my imagination. I was already working the yoke in a different color. Making it in entrelac would just make the color change appear justified.

I looked up her other articles in the series in case they had helpful information.

I tracked down my Spring 2007 issue of Interweave Knits and taught myself entrelac using the tutorial.

I did some math to prepare for the entrelac even though I was still working on the sleeves.

Knitter's Block
And then the sweater stalled.

I had too many WIPs and this one was tossed aside in an attempt to pair down what I was working on. After all, summer was coming, I wouldn't need a long sleeved, wool blend sweater for a few months.

I know I function better with just one project at a time. Ok, maybe two. I can see progress. I don't have decided what to work on. I just pick one up and go. Still I can't stop myself from casting on multiple projects. Especially when I get mad at an uncooperative striping sequence.

Ironically, my abundance of WIPs was a contributing factor in me getting this sweater out again.

The thought of my multiple WIPs overwhelemed me and I decided that I just needed to finish something. The Green Schleppy seemed closest to completion as well as easiest since it is mostly stockinette stitch. (At least until I get to the entrelac part.)

Another inspiration was the copy of Custom Knits by Wendy Bernard I picked up on Saturday.

It's an interesting book. The patterns are nice, but really I'm after the instructions about knitting top down sweaters in the back of the book. I intend to apply the knowledge to all those lovely skeins of sweater quantity yarn I've bought at fiber festivals lately that are destined to be other Schleppy Sweaters.

Also, the Green Schleppy was sucking up a large number of needle resources. The body was on a long Denise cable. The sleeves were being worked two-at-a-time in the round so they were taking up a set of DPNs as well as a long cable and set of Denise tips. Not to mention numerous stitch markers.

Heading for Disaster?
I don't know if it was the idea that I can't start a new sweater until I finish an active sweater or the desire to be knitting one of my own designs, or a need for US6 needles, but I ran and got the Green Schleppy out.

Having joined the sleeves to the body last night I've freed up all those needle resources and reduced it to a long cable and needle tips. I've also freed up the knitter's block and feel like I have good momentum to finish it.

Now I'm working through the initial raglan decreases and heading toward the entrelac. I've already realized my initial math was based on incorrect numbers. I'm smart enough to wait until I finish these first 5 decrease rounds before I start crunching numbers again.

And then the fun really starts.