She-Ra...

She may not be the master of the universe, but she does kick ass as far as I can remember. Seeing however as she never wore sleeves, she probably didn't run into the problem I'm currently having as a result of weekends spent doing this:

What problem might that be? Well, apparently my BIG HONKING DELTS (BHDs) don't fit into regular sleeves. Much to my surprise, I followed the directions exactly as Jenna had written them to add the set in sleeve onto a sleeveless sweater. I had a lot of fun with the short rows and not having to seam and everything until I went to try it on. The sleeves are quite abbreviated, so I had to tug and pull and stretch those suckers to get them over my upper arms. And my arms barely fit through there. Unfortunately, picking up one stitch for every two rows, while standard, apparenty doesn't accomodate my BHDs. Note to self, bind off with a larger needle next time. Oh yeah, and pick up more stitches.

The other thing I noticed was that it seemed that the seams for this style of sleeve don't appear to be that secure. It looks like the sleeve pulls away from the body a bit and looks just plain weird. I'm not sure if that will go away with a larger sleeve or what, but I'm sure hoping.

I'm betting that most people who read this are probably saying to themselves, anal much? First the wonky hip thing, then the neckline issue, and now this. Does she like to knit things up just to rip them out again? Well, I admit it. I do have serious anal retentive tendencies. I just like to think I hold myself to a high standard. There's nothing wrong with that. Really.

Oh wait, I just realized that I never mentioned the neckline issue because I was on blog strike towards the end of last week out of sheer depression due to this project. So I showed the body being done and mentioned that it was blocking, but that's the last of it since now. Well, I spazzed a bit between then and now. I started off doing the neckline as instructed using a K2Tog decrease to attach the ribbed neckband to the picked up stitches around the neckline shaping. I got halfway done and decided that I didn't like the right slanting decrease there because the left leg of the picked up stitches shows prominently. I had read that someone else substituted SSK here and tried it. Wow, the picked up stitch is hidden entirely underneath the neckband stitch. I like that better. RIP! I started over and again got halfway around the neckband and inspected my work. Eww, the last stitch on the neckband is slanting to the left (duh!) and so now the ribbing looks all broken there and just plain funky.

I took it to the WeHo SNB for a second opinion. I met Jillian for the first time (it's weird meeting people you already "know"!) and she also thought it looked a bit weird. Mostly because it was just loose, but I didn't think I could salvage it and still be happy with the end product. Thankfully, Jillian gave me the little push I needed to rip it out for the second time. Anyway, I was too depressed to deal with the neckline for a third time that night, but I did finally get to it this weekend. Now, I am actually happy with the fit and can finally show it without the IBTs making an appearance.


No, the sleeve is not staying on as is, or at least I don't think it is. I'm going to try it with more stitches on the other side just to make sure that I don't go overboard, then I'll rip this side out. Aha! Planning things out for once. Imagine that.

So what did I do at SNB if I didn't have the heart to work on Hopeful? Well, I did cast on for Unbiased finally. Man oh man, is recycled silk a pain to knit with. So much fuzzy stuff to navigate, but the end product is just gorgeous! One caveat, if you ever buy a ball of recycled silk and you have a chance to choose from many, make sure you inspect the thickness and try and find the ones that are fairly consistent throughout. The picture shows the panel where I changed balls right in the middle and while you can't tell from the picture, if you pick it up, it feels like I changed gauge or something when I changed balls. It's actually because the second ball is seriously thin in places and makes the fabric feel wimpy. Just a warning.

I finished one ball over the weekend and started a second ball. The entire second panel is getting frogged, but the third panel looks like it'll be fine. I'm keeping the two on the left. Vastly different colors in these two panels, huh? I hope that looks okay...