Sweater Progress in the Midst of Chaos

The sleeves are joined to the body.  Yay!

Once again, gauge became an issue.  The body was knit on long circular size 2s.  The sleeves were knit on short and very slightly smaller size 2s which threw my gauge way off.  *Big sigh.* To compensate, I had to add 12 more rows to the sleeves than the math initially dictated.  On the upside, it looks like I have a pretty good reason to place an order for some more needles (and probably yarn, why not?) Yay!

This sweater is demanding a crew neck, right?  It needs to be uni-sex and I think a v-neck would look too formal against the video game motif.  I need to drag out my sweater design books for a quick refresher for plotting the neck curve before I get too far along in my raglan shaping.  If memory serves, the neck drop is about 1.5 inches from the top so there’s still a considerable amount of knitting before I get there.

While I’ve been focusing on getting this sweater done, my kitchen has been undergoing a DIY improvement project (new floors).  All of my kitchen appliances and furniture have been moved to the living room.  It is chaos.  How is one supposed to knit and work on the house at the same time?!?  It’s a very difficult decision to choose between the two.  But since it’s not very soothing to knit while crammed in against an oven, I found the motivation to help my hubby finish grouting last night.  My fridge and stove should be tucked back into their cubbies sometime today and I can pretend that the whole thing never happened.  Home improvement projects are just a miserable experience for me.  Unfortunately, my hubby seems to find them enjoyable and rewarding so there are probably many more on the horizon… like next weekend!

As always, while I’m working away on a project, my mind is on future projects.  I’ve recently learned how to do intarsia in the round.  It is far easier than I expected but with one little caveat.  With this technique, while you are technically knitting in the round, you still must knit back and forth as if it were flat.  The benefit is that you can still knit in the round with no seams but the downside is that there’s lots and lots of purling.  I was hoping that intarsia in the round would miraculously be all knit stitches.  Still, I may find a good use for it in the future.  Maybe even somewhere near the top of this sweater?  Hmmm….