living in the woods and making stuff

My tomten jacket seems to keep on going. I thought that I had the sleeves figured out perfectly, using a short row method to create a bit of a raglan shape. This looked really good on one of the people who was making the jacket in my class, but for some reason it kind of backfired on me. Instead of having a nice shapely shoulder, I ended up with an exaggerated football shoulder, complete with puffiness and shoulderpad like shaping…

OK, maybe it wasn’t really that bad, but it somehow didn’t work for me. So, I decided to go with the original pattern, as written by Elizabeth Zimmerman. Keep the arm heading out perpendicular to the body. Sounds good, right? This time the arm ended up too short. I shaped the arm by decreasing 2 stitches every 3 ridges, as specified in the pattern, but because I changed the yarn weight I ended up finishing the decreases too soon. I thought that it might look ok, but have decided to take the arm back, and make the decreases every 4 ridges.

Right now I have one shoulder pad shoulder and one too short arm and I am hesitating to rip either. The sweater is living on my living room floor, until I get around to ripping the sleeves out and reknitting them.