2 hands, 2 weeks, 4 sleeves

I know people hate knitting sleeves.  They talk about being on sleeve island and how bored they are.  For many, sleeves are the closet cleaning of knitting. People hate doing it but know it's got to be done.

Me, I like sleeve island.  Sleeves are little.  They're relatively easy and always the same basic shape.  Sleeves tell me a sweater is closer to the end than to the beginning (I rarely knit sleeves first) and they get me in the groove of finishing a brand new garment (I love new sweaters).

Last week was week 1 of 2 for Ella's sleeve time. Nora has us working on the sleeves to make the top of our coats to get the fit right before we move on to the skirt/bottom.  I finished my first sleeve Friday night with a few little hiccups in terms of the cap fitting the armhole and one of those late night silly panics which was easily fixed in the morning with a bit of frogging (armhole was too big so I removed the orange stripe at the shoulder).  

After that, it was back to Amused.  I finished the 6.5" of body ribbing on Saturday whilst Emma and I had a super lazy, all tv and junk food girl weekend. I decided that a tubular bind off would make the bottom hem look magnifique.  I pulled out my Big Book of Knitting (excellent reference book for finishing garments) and figured out how to do the 2X2 hem in the round.  

It was a whole lot of work, but wow!, it was worth it.  Then I moved on to sleeve 1.  Three episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and 2 episodes of Game of Thrones later, it was done (with a matching tubular bind off).  I love yarn that knits to 4 sts to the inch.

Sunday, I made excellent progress on sleeve 2 (or 3 of 4 if you're counting).  I have the cuff to complete and then Amused is a collar away from completion.

I'm a good KAL'er so I went back to Ella last night.  Sleeve 2 (or 4 of 4 if you're counting) is on the needles.  

Can my 2 hands, finish 4 sleeves in 2 weeks?  I'll let you know after this weekend.  

Comments

[Seanna Lea]

You are definitely a good KAL-er. I am still on the bodice. I got stalled in the idea that the project is for me very much not portable. Did you just wind off some yarn to travel with or do you only work on it at home?

[Allison]

You go! The Big Book of Knitting is my favorite "how-to" knitting book--I bought it exclusively for the tubular bind off, but it has so many other useful techniques.