End of September status update

I'm ahead of schedule on the stupid, hateful St. Enda sweater. As you may remember, my goal was to have one sleeve finished by the end of September. Although I do not have one finished sleeve, I have two sleeves which are both almost finished.

I finished the first a few weeks ago, I thought, until I realized that Alice Starmore apparently designed sweaters for gnomes. It looked a little stubby to me, but sleeves always do look funny before you sew them up, and the schematic measurements are all in metric so they are meaningless to me (the US really should go metric, but that's another rant for another day). I trusted in the pattern and after washing and blocking the sleeve realized that not only was the saddle part too short, but the whole dang sleeve was a few inches short as well.


By that time I had already begun the second sleeve so I will finish it and then go back to the first one, rip back the saddle to the bind off, add a few more inches and do the saddle again.


Actually, I only have about 2 more inches of very short rows and can feasibly finish this sleeve by the end of the month (i.e. tonight), thus fulfilling my goal. But who knows what I'll feeling like doing when I get home from work at 9:30 tonight? I may just have a glass of wine and some ice cream and call it a night.

Here are both sleeves side by side, just because it makes me feel productive. The little blue markers on the left indicate where I originally would have bound off, following the pattern instructions. Also, notice how nice the sleeve on the right looks, perfectly illustrating why blocking is so important.