Sleeves

After much trial and error on the sleeve front, I finally came up with a design I like. This takes advantages of the natural decreases & increases in the pattern and gives the edges a nice, swoopy design. In fact, I like this way of decreasing (which works on both sides of the pattern) much better than what I used on the body of the actual dress. I do not, however, like it so much better that I'll be reknitting the dress. Nope. The decreases already in there work just fine.

So with the sleeves, first I had one that I loved, but was far too big. That's it above. Then I dyed it - it's the green sleeves in the lower middle of the picture below. Then I tried to make a smaller one that just looked terrible. This is it here. Dyed it became the dark green sleeve on the far right. And the shape looked even more horrible than it did during blocking, during which time it was vaguely acceptable. Then it turned crappy. Everything else in this picture are various test color swatches I worked on in the last few weeks.Then I hit on my smart decreasing idea, the sleeve looked great, but was still too small. Then in a moment of brilliance, I came upon the idea of doing the exact same pattern, but going up a needle size. Voila! Perfection. Or at least, near perfection. I'll know for sure when I actually sew up the new bodice.

All this experimentation took place on the left sleeve. Last night I was able to successfully translate the idea to the right sleeve. It's blocking right now.

It's a real statement on what Justin's gone through in terms of being surrounded by knitting (or possibly in terms of time spent around me), that he can see this on the arm of the couch and say nothing. In fact, I've done this numerous times, to no comment. Just so no one worries, I did not leave the sleeve full of pins on the arm of the couch near where he sits.