Tuesday, March 20, 2007

NAVIGATING THE SLEEVES

Callin' all crew: it's sleeve time. I know, I know, you only just joined and now you're changing course. That's life on the high seas, eh? Not all that bad, really, me mateties—just a bit of navigation, that's all. See, as hard as I thought, there just didn't seem any simpler way around these sleeves. The tricky thing is keepin' the stitches all going the same way but if you're on circs and suddenly switching directions like, things get mucky.

Okay, so first thing you'll need is another set of long needles or another set of circs. I prefer straights anyway on account of how I knit so straights it is for me. Measure out your stitches cause you'll be working on one half your not-a-poncho at a time while leaving the other half restin on your a spare needle. The easiest way to do this is to find the direct center of your point, which is under one arm, then find the center of where you joined up, which is under the other. There'll be some tangles and sorting out yarns going on when you separate and all.

Ready? Once you have half your stitches transfered onto another needle (I left the second half on the poop deck with the circs), you're going to cast on for the sleeves: 20 stitches on each side. These are short sleeves but if you want them longer, add more stitches. You can check how many you need/want by taking your guage: find a clear part of your sea without any eddies or whirlpools, count out how many stitches you get per inch and then figure our how many you'd need to cast on. It's very difficult to show a proper phote with all thpse stitches crunched up but hopefully you'll get the idea.

After this, we'll be moving across the center of the chest, working fronts and backs separately. There'll be a little sewing up to do when we're finished but nothing too time-consuming. And, I know by now you've got a ton of threads hanging everywhere but sail right on 'cause we're almost there. By the end of March, I'll be talking surface embellishments (equivelent to fourlong).

Don't hesitate to ask me if you got troubles. I'm just hanging out here on deck.

A new entry, Mardi's with the sleeves cast on. Jaw-dropping gorgeous!