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After my previous ponderings about the sleeve I proceeded to frog the flat-knit piece and re-cast-on in the round to eliminate the underarm seam. It will make it harder to block, but then I'm not a fan of severe blocking unless it's lace. I'll probably do this sweater's first blocking after the entire sweater has been assembled.
After a good 40? 50? 60? rows on the sleeve I pinned the front and back panel together and fitted it on Eisirt. First of all, let's all admire this: thát is a beautiful placement of the V-neck!
I still need to pick up stitches along the edge, pick up that one parked stitch in the centre of the V, and knit a lovely ribbing, but I am very pleased with how it sits so far!
The main purpose of fitting everything was to check how far up I was with the sleeve. If I could match a point on the sleeve with another point on the body, I would have a point of reference!
Front and back panels pinned together on the body, sleeve slid onto the arm, and making sure the bottom cuff rested comfortably on the wrist. I was just far enough along to pick a row on the sleeve to place a marker and then placed another marker on the body of the front panel, so I would have a reference point. If Eisirt wears the sweater, the markers are at the same height.
This is a trick I've used with socks before, because I'm not terribly good at counting rows in all knit works. I can now continue post-haste up the sleeve and slide the markers on both parts of the sweater up as I progress. As long as I move both markers with the same number of rows, I will soon find the point on the body where the pattern stitch starts and I can start on the pattern stitch on the sleeve as well.
In a wholly unrelated knitting adventure, I found out my gauge is remarkably more tight when I'm knitting on DPNs as opposed to circular needles (it says a lot about why my sock gauge is always a bit "off"). I was knitting the sleeve in the round on trusty DPNs, because I do not like knitting magic loop method. But my 4 mm DPNs are very short, and with the sleeve increases I was soon pressed for another DPN. I tried the magic loop method, decided against it again, and I'm now using DPNs combined with a short 4mm circular as a third and fifth needle.*) Needles one, two and four are DPNs, and because of the extra needles I will now definitely have enough space on the needles for all the stitches of the sleeve, right up until the moment I can do the whole sleeve on the short circular and I will no longer need the DPNs.
The first part of the sleeve near the cuff ribbing was knit on only DPNs and its gauge is quite a bit tighter than the later part when I added the extra circular. Now that I felt my tension shift, I am more aware that I have to knit comfortably and not quite as tightly as before.
-----
*) Funny story: At some point I picked up the loosely lying around free needle tip from the circular needle but it was actually the wrong end! So I knit my stitches onto the back end and I made a bit of a mess. I did not know you could do that, and with the möbius shenanigans of the Sock Madness fresh in everyone's memory, it's probably a great technique to use in a sock some day.
Of course, using three DPNs and a circular twice in the row means I have 2 DPNs as spares, so I could easily transfer stitches onto a spare DPN to fix the stitches driving on the wrong end of the circular. Spookrijders!
After a good 40? 50? 60? rows on the sleeve I pinned the front and back panel together and fitted it on Eisirt. First of all, let's all admire this: thát is a beautiful placement of the V-neck!
I still need to pick up stitches along the edge, pick up that one parked stitch in the centre of the V, and knit a lovely ribbing, but I am very pleased with how it sits so far!
The main purpose of fitting everything was to check how far up I was with the sleeve. If I could match a point on the sleeve with another point on the body, I would have a point of reference!
Front and back panels pinned together on the body, sleeve slid onto the arm, and making sure the bottom cuff rested comfortably on the wrist. I was just far enough along to pick a row on the sleeve to place a marker and then placed another marker on the body of the front panel, so I would have a reference point. If Eisirt wears the sweater, the markers are at the same height.
This is a trick I've used with socks before, because I'm not terribly good at counting rows in all knit works. I can now continue post-haste up the sleeve and slide the markers on both parts of the sweater up as I progress. As long as I move both markers with the same number of rows, I will soon find the point on the body where the pattern stitch starts and I can start on the pattern stitch on the sleeve as well.
In a wholly unrelated knitting adventure, I found out my gauge is remarkably more tight when I'm knitting on DPNs as opposed to circular needles (it says a lot about why my sock gauge is always a bit "off"). I was knitting the sleeve in the round on trusty DPNs, because I do not like knitting magic loop method. But my 4 mm DPNs are very short, and with the sleeve increases I was soon pressed for another DPN. I tried the magic loop method, decided against it again, and I'm now using DPNs combined with a short 4mm circular as a third and fifth needle.*) Needles one, two and four are DPNs, and because of the extra needles I will now definitely have enough space on the needles for all the stitches of the sleeve, right up until the moment I can do the whole sleeve on the short circular and I will no longer need the DPNs.
The first part of the sleeve near the cuff ribbing was knit on only DPNs and its gauge is quite a bit tighter than the later part when I added the extra circular. Now that I felt my tension shift, I am more aware that I have to knit comfortably and not quite as tightly as before.
-----
*) Funny story: At some point I picked up the loosely lying around free needle tip from the circular needle but it was actually the wrong end! So I knit my stitches onto the back end and I made a bit of a mess. I did not know you could do that, and with the möbius shenanigans of the Sock Madness fresh in everyone's memory, it's probably a great technique to use in a sock some day.
Of course, using three DPNs and a circular twice in the row means I have 2 DPNs as spares, so I could easily transfer stitches onto a spare DPN to fix the stitches driving on the wrong end of the circular. Spookrijders!
