sophy's knits, notes, etc.

i finished my featherweight cardigan this morning! [ravelry]

i'll have more pictures as soon as i wash and block it. since i'm not ready to post my notes on it, i thought i'd talk about the part of the cardigan i spent the last two weeks knitting, unraveling, and knitting again: the sleeves.

keep in mind, this is a top-down seamless cardigan; they're very simple sleeves and i shortened mine to reach my elbow. at the start of the sleeve instructions, the designer gives you 3 options for knitting them:

slip held sleeve sts onto 12" circular, or spread evenly over dpns or 2 circular needles.

now that i've finished the cardigan, i don't think i recommend any of these methods. here are my not entirely objective reasons why:

12" circular needles only work if your sleeve circumference is larger than that. my upper arm is at most 11" around and i know this isn't the case for everyone. but, if you're knitting this with the specified yarn and needles, your stitches are already very loose and if you're me, you don't want to stretch them out even more on needles that are too long.

knowing this from the get-go, i actually bought a pair of 9" circular needles (so cute!) in US 6... except that after i knitted a few rows i realized these were 4.25 mm instead of 4 mm. guh. unraveled.

knitting with dpns is sometimes not comfortable for me and causes crazy ladders. i think dpns are great for knitting socks with short rows, knitting all things for a baby, or for finishing hats. but, once again because this is a laceweight yarn knit very loosely on 4 mm needles, it just seemed a lot harder to keep my stitches even when i passed from one needle to the next. progress was really slow, so halfway through one sleeve i switched over to the third method.

knitting with 2 long circular needles can be finicky, otherwise i have nothing against it. when you divide stitches between 2 circular needles to knit in the round, it's pretty likely that you're using 2 different lengths of needle, right? i mean, unless you're like me and habitually forget what lengths you have in stock, there's really no reason to have multiple circular needles of the same length. in this case, i had 36" and 24" inch needles; everytime i pulled them out of my bag, i had to untangle them from each other and from the delicate yarn.

although this is usually my preferred way to knit in-the-round, soon enough i was fed up; i removed the 24" circular needle and switched to magic loop knitting on the 36" needle.

magic loop knitting on the banks of lake merrit while i waited for erica.

with this method, i quickly finished the first sleeve. then i tried on the cardigan and decided i'd shortened the sleeve too much; it fell at least 2 inches above my elbow. i unraveled it again.

after those false starts, i actually finished both sleeves in a matter of days using only magic loop. so much faster and easier to handle... project notes soon to follow.

happy knitting!