Battle of the Sleeves

Tonight I finally finished my Featherweight Cardigan. I've had the body finished since the summer, but somehow the sleeves wouldn't come along. I started off on magic loop, my favourite way of working small things in the round. Unfortunately it's not so much a favourite with tiny yarn on bigger needles. There was horrible laddering and it was altogether to fiddly. Knitting the sleeves flat on circulars was no better.

Next up were the DPNs. Again, not so much of a problem if the needles aren't a little big for the yarn. I got about a centimeter further than with the circular and gave up, this time for a month or two. As a last resort I got a tiny (30 cm) circular needle. This was even more fiddly and annoying than either of the other options. The cardigan went back into time-out and by this time I was afraid it would never come out again, until I found a way to get them done.

I was going to knit the sleeves flat, bottom up. Then, I'd graft them to the live stitches at the shoulder and seam them closed. It might be the most inefficient way to knit the sleeves on a top down raglan, but it was the only way it'd get done. And I was right, from the moment I cast on the first sleeve, it took less than a week to have the whole thing seamed and ready to go.

It's around midnight now, so the pictures will have to wait until daylight.