Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Two Sleeves at Once

I have finished the front of my Gatsby Girl Pullover; with the back already done, now it's just down to the sleeves. Since I've been working on this sweater (in between lots of other smaller projects) since July, I am really ready to finish. So, I decided to think about knitting both sleeves at once, something I've never done.

I posed a question about this technique on the wonderful Yahoo KnitList Group, and got such an overwhelming response--probably about 40 people detailing the benefits of knitting two sleeves at once! Of course, I decided to give it a try and cast on. Many of the people who wrote me about knitting two sleeves at once did have some great tips to keep disasters from happening. Many of these are lessons learned from personal experience, I'm sure, and I'm happy to know about them and to share them here with you:

--Put a marker at the beginning (right side) of the first sleeve. That
way you'll always be in the right place if you have to stop knitting in the middle of a row.
--Never stop between the two pieces; at least start a row on the second sleeve if
you have to stop in the middle, otherwise you'll forget which sleeve you
just finished working on.
--Pin the two sleeves together in the middle so everything will stay straight. You can move the pin/marker up as you knit.
--Another suggestion was to put a big safety pin at the beginning of the second sleeve, as a reminder that this piece must be knit before turning!
--To prevent the two balls of yarn from tangling, put each ball in a Ziplock bag and snip a corner to run the yarn through. If you don't do this, at least stop and untangle the balls at the end of each row to keep tangles from getting too serious.
--Pay attention to things like increases, and make sure you do them on both sleeves. Use a row counter or other method of keeping track of increases--perhaps one on each sleeve--if that's easiest.

So I've done two rows and so far, so good. I'll let you know how it goes. Thank you to all my wonderful KnitList friends--you ALWAYS come through!

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