2+2=4

The last time I posted on this blog about the Country Silk Cardigan it looked like this. Now, it looks like this!!! Yup that's right it's going to have two sleeves, yipee. Seems though I can't count. When I got to this stage I needed to join all the constituent parts to start to knit the yoke piece. This involves sewing up the small sleeve joins to the front parts and back piece. Not really a problem until I noticed that one of the sleeves didn't seem to be going in all that easily - I thought no more of it, just assumed that my tension had changed in the month or so between the first sleeve and the second sleeve being knit. Then I counted stitches, I wanted to make sure I had the right amount from the five pieces to make the yoke, I was sure I had but just to be super sure I checked. Now I knew I was 2 stitches short on each of the front pieces (long story) but other than that I was right. So, I counted the stitches and all was ok until I checked the 1st sleeve I knit, try as I may it kept totalling 66 stitches (it should have been 62), that couldn't be right. But it might go a little way to explaining why it was a little more difficult to sew in. I checked the pattern and sure enough the next size up left 66 stitches remaining, so I'd obviously forgotten what size I was knitting when finishing the first sleeve and had left my decrease rows short which again accounted for the difference in length when trying to sew it into the back and front pieces.

So, what to do? have one sleeve slightly larger than the other and puckering slightly? I'll admit to briefly entertaining this notion, especially as it would have sorted out exactly (4 stitches extra on the sleeve, 4 stitches short on the 2 front pieces) my overall shortfall of stitches for the yoke. In the end good sense prevailed and I did what any concientious knitter would do. I unpicked all the sewing attaching the offending sleeve, rejoined the yarn and the knit the 4 missing rows. Then I put it all back together again to start the yoke (still 4 stitches shy). I have rectified that however and I just hope it's not noticeable. So, here's my progress to date. The yoke is going very slowly,all those stiches and off course I just can't wait to sew in all those ends!

By the way, when knitting a yoked garment and the pattern tells you to leave all live stitches on stitch holders, don't. Leave them on circular needles instead. When the time comes to join all the pieces together for the yoke it'll be much easier to join all the stiches together off circular needles than from stitch holders which invariably will have been put on with the clip end in the wrong direction, or maybe that's just me.

Before I sign off I have to leave you with one last photo. To explain - see that last photo above with the yoke started, well I wasn't the photographer. I had laid out the garment on the table and Cathal was waiting for me as I got ready to leave for tennis - running late as usual. I wanted to take the photo before we left as I thought it would be much darker by the time we got back. So I asked Cathal to take the pic, I also told him NOT to touch the garment for fear of loosing any of the 200 odd stitches but other than that I told him to go for it. Do what he likes - I was really wondering if he would take it from a different angle or just shoot it different to the way I would have done it. When I looked at the camera I burst out laughing! Hope you will too - here's Cathal modelling my cardie - bearing in mind he wasn't allowed to touch the knitting he tried to put his head into the neck part so that he could sort of appear as if he was wearing the cardie. Maybe I'll try to peruade him to model the finished cardie - now that would be funny!