What I Knit This Week

I rushed to finish my alligator socks last week because I had a sneaking suspicion I might find some sock yarn under the Christmas tree this year.

Sure enough, Santa sent me a whole box of goodies from West Yorkshire Spinners, one of my favorite yarn brands at the moment.

Did I immediately cast on a new pair of socks? Nope. Instead, I became fully obsessed with my Arctic Light Sweater sleeves. 

In this past year of constant knitting, I have learned a few things about myself. One is that Second Sock Syndrome rarely affects me, provided I cast on my second sock immediately after finishing the first. Another lesson I had to learn the hard way is that once I find myself on Sleeve Island, I will remain there for the rest of my life, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge my own influence on the situation.

Luckily, I have discovered two ways to circumvent Sleeve Island. The first is to work the sleeves simultaneously on one extra-long circular needle. Is it a fiddly pain in the ass? Yes. Does it work? Also yes.

The second way I avoid Sleeve Island is to work the sleeves before I've finished the body. In the case of the Arctic Lights sweater, after I split for sleeves, I worked on the body until I finished my current ball of yarn, then I put the body stitches on waste yarn and started plugging away on the sleeves.

For a while, the sweater looked something like this:

 

But I am happy to report that I finished both sleeves and -- get this! -- I even got myself to do a tubular bind off.

 

I still refuse to do a tubular bind off on a whole sweater hem, but Andrea Mowry's tutorial made me feel confident enough to do sleeve cuffs. The key is to prep the knit stitches purlwise and remove them knitwise, then to prep the purl stitches knitwise and remove them purlwise. This simple piece of advice helped me see what I was doing and figure out what to do next when I lost my train of thought.

I now have the body back on the needles and I'll keep you posted as I finish that process.

 

Once I snapped out of my sleeve trance, I did dig into my Christmas yarn.

I'm currently using West Yorkshire Spinners Signature 4-Ply in the color "Mallard" to make a man-sized ribbed sock.

 

Finally, this monstrosity found itself onto my needles, and I assure you it will be frogged as soon as I work up the nerve to look at it again:

I hope you had a wonderful year of knitting, and I wish you many wonderful WIPs in the year to come!