ring around the rosies

No Escape from Sleeve Island

I bet when Becky coined the term "Sleeve Island," she didn't realize how ubiquitous it would become. However, it perfectly describes the seeming pointlessness, the vagueries, the isolating experience of making a sleeve. The horror, the horror. Get in a rowboat and row, row, row in circles around the island for about five hours waving your arms in the air at the plane trying to get some results and you still haven't come close to the sleeve-making head-banging-against-wall frustrations. It's enough to cause me to change every garment into a sleeveless version. Hey, my arms aren't too bad. Why should I cover them up anyway?

Take my Vino Wrap Jacket, for instance (from Rebecca 22). This week, while visiting aforementioned BF and NB, I worked myself into a sleeve-making frenzy. Neighbors' kids were peeping through the window to witness the fury. I knitted myself through that Rebecca pattern and embraced the task as though it were the only sleeve I'd ever have to make. I gave myself to the sleeve, thinking there's no way *I'm* getting trapped on Sleeve Island. I'll beat it yet. Well, the small children peering through the windows certainly got an eye and an earful when they heard the curses that day, I'll tell you. For when I got to the end, I realized I had made a sleeve for an Amazon. Penthiselea, Queen of the Amazons, no less. It was gorgeous in all its Manos del Uruguayan beauty. However, as you can see from the picture below, it dwarfed everyday objects and intimidated the remaining pieces of the sweater into submission, chaining me to Sleeve Island once again.

Do you like my blue table? It's in my dining room. Don't you want to eat blue soup with me a la Bridget Jones? As for Mr. Sleeve, he's about 8 cm too long.

So, with resentment building, I revisited the sections of the sleeve, hoping to discover the root of my very long errors. One thing I love about the Rebecca patterns is the detailed diagrams. Where they are short on instruction (note the terse European "reversing shaping" directive), they are long on diagrams. Anyway, speaking of long, I noticed that yes, I had knitted for 2 cm longer than indicated before beginning increases. Then, when I reached the shoulder shaping, things took a nasty turn. For I wondered if I had been confused by the instructions, and here's where I need your help.

The shoulder shaping calls for binding off in the following way:
"When work measures 54 cm bind off for sleeve cap at each end of every 2nd row 3 sts. once, 2 sts. once, 1 st. 6 times, 2sts. 3 times, and 3 sts. twice."

Okay, I thought about this very very hard before I did it, and I couldn't think of anyway to bind off at each end of every row. Once you reach the end of a row, how can you bind off? Am I missing something? Maybe this is so elementary and I'm a complete idiot (both very possible), but I'm still confused by the direction. Anyway, so I bound off at the beginning of one RS row, and then again at the beginning of the next WS row, thereby fulfilling the "at each end of every second row" part of the sentence. Therefore, to bind off 1 st. 6 times, would take 12 rows, and to bind off 2 sts. 3 times would take 6 rows and so on. Do you follow me here?

However, when I looked at my cap compared to the diagram, the topography of the outline resembled a plateau instead of a hill, meaning my bind offs had been spread over more rows than seemed to be necessary. Measurements indicated that the total length of this portion of the sleeve was indeed a couple of cm. longer than the diagram, but the width was right on target. Is my gauge off? I maintain that there is, indeed, no escape from sleeve island.

Beachy Spring Break

The kids say hi! The weather is great. Wish you were here.

A red-headed cousin makes for a very fun spring break.

We visited Dauphin Island on Friday, about an hour from my house. It's a lovely location with water you can actually swim in and natural white sand, not like the manmade beaches and polluted water around here. But even a day at a bad beach is better than no beach at all!

The weather was sunny and 80 degrees and made for excellent reading and kite flying. And I didn't even get sunburned (much). A word of advice: Pick up the new Jonathan Safron Foer novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, whatever you do. I'm only half-way through and I already want to read it again.

Well, my spring break is almost over. Have a happy Easter, everyone! Thank you Easter bunny, bawk bawk!

Posted by Rachel at March 27, 2005 09:06 AM