Appendage Problems

Well, hello there!

Just a brief post tonight to tell you what I've been up to.  

My Scott Base socks are rockin' along:

Love. These. Socks.

This is my second sock.  I still need to knit the first one.  According to Lady L, you always start with the second sock, then knit the first.  That way, you avoid the boredom we all feel when working on the second sock (assuming you knit one at a time).  If you don't realize this is all very tongue-in-cheek, you'll be scratching your head for a while.  Thanks for the tip, Lady L!  *wink*

In other news, I've finally found the perfect buttons for my baby project, and the backordered yarn has come in so I'll be finishing baby stuff this week and hope to ship it this Saturday.  I'd better, because my expectant friend is telling me she's feeling like this baby's gonna be here a tad early.  No time to waste!  Pictures to come once the package has arrived at it's destination.

The biggest news of the week concerns "The Lacy Beast" which I've been slaving on for many, many weeks now.  The body is knit up to the sleeves and I began the first sleeve a couple weeks ago and made great strides.  Unfortunately, I realized last last night that there was something decidedly wrong.  The sleeve is too un-freaking-believably big around.  I mean seriously wacked.  These pictures are of the sleeve knit exactly to instructions for the smallest size:

This shaping is...er, interesting.

I am not even pulling on the sleeve...honest!
I could fit another freaking arm in there.

Um...no.

I made the painful decision last night to rip back the sleeve to the ribbing and begin again, adjusting the increases in a way that makes sense to me.  It is unfortunate that I wasn't smart enough to see the weird direction the sleeve was going BEFORE I got to 15 inches out of a total of 16.75.

Foreseeing a problem - not my strong suit

I'm not that great at modifying patterns, so I know I want to end up with the same number of stitches the pattern calls for when joining the sleeves to the body, so I've determined that the best way to adjust it is to space out my increases considerably.  I had read some comments on the pattern page on Ravelry remarking that in the original photos published in Interweave Knits, they had pinned the sleeves for the photo.  Now I know why.  I don't get the shaping at all.  At. All. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to throw this whole thing across the room, but I persist because it is a rather lovely pattern (when it's finished) that I've drooled over forever, so I WILL prevail.  

On a side note, remember these that I bought to help work on the sleeve?

I mentioned they were cheap but I didn't realize how cheap.  I apologize in advance to anyone who loves Knitter's Pride stuff, but quite frankly, after just using these on the one sleeve, and then not for the entire 15 inches, these tips have small divets in them from use already.  Maybe I'm spoiled with my Addi's, but I would never, ever buy any of these again.  My rosewood needles offer less friction than these.  Boo...

On a final note, The Husband sent this to me weeks ago because he thought it was funny and would be a good addition to my blog.  So, because I love The Husband and think it's sweet that he'd find ANY picture that had anything to do with knitting/yarn for me, here it is:

And with that, I'm out...

Lisa 

xoxo