We have sleeve

The ol' carpal tunnel issues are acting up, but I am obsessed with my Icelandic-adjacent sweater. I managed to get the body up to the point where you have to wait for sleeves... and I'm mostly done the first of them!

Not kidding about the carpal tunnel though. I really need to pace myself. 

I won't show you the completed body because it's impossible to photograph while still on the circular needles - just a big lump of green. Instead, here's a cuff detail:

Managed to match the cuff on the body of the sweater, despite the temptation to go another quarter inch.

Hello lumpy increase seam!

 

The sleeve increases took some planning. I am using a vintage pattern I actually knit several times back in the day, and I can see now that the increases were written for convenience, not because anybody actually wants a six-round run of one width, then a sudden jut outward of two additional stitches. Instead I opted for an increase at the end of the third round, then one at the start of the sixth, and so on. 

I agonized for over an hour about how to do these increases, because of course everybody's going to see the inside of the arm while I'm wearing this thing and care one way or the other, sigh. I got my Principles of Knitting doorstopper off the shelf and pored over my options, before settling on a bar increase for the end of row one, and a right raised increase for the ones at the beginning of the row. 

It was impossible to photograph the result of this for you but essentially, the actual bar of the bar increase makes it *so* much easier to count which round I'm on. It pushes the column of knit stitches to the right, away from the increase line, and since there's no corresponding left-leaning bar increase I picked a right raised increase to push the other column to the left, also away from the increase line. 

Here's the result, which I'm hoping will be a lot more polished-looking once it's blocked and ready to wear:

With luck I'll finish this sleeve today and get a good start on the second one tomorrow. Wouldn't it be exciting if I was up to the yoke in time to show you something pretty next Saturday? Exciting and daunting, because having adapted the sleeve size to suit the profile I wanted (the original is very much oversized) my stitch count isn't going to match the pattern's when I get there. 

I was going to improvise the colour design anyway but now I'm really gonna have to start from scratch. And decision-making is not my strong suit! See the aforementioned hour of agony over stitch increases that barely show.

I'm going to leave you today with a photo of my reference bookshelf (excluding two small stitch guides that didn't fit, and The Principles of Knitting, which is so heavy it has to live elsewhere!) 

I hope you have a wonderful sunny Saturday - we've got sun but also extreme cold, so I plan to settle in at whatever desk has the best sun patch - and I look forward to seeing you next week!