living in the woods and making stuff

All our cold weather, and being stuck inside sick means that I finally got around to ripping out my trial (and error) tomten sleeves. The football shoulder and the too skinny sleeve are gone. I ended up with two sleeves, pretty much identical in dimensions, and a little on the big side. I decreased two stitches every 4 ridges, instead of every three as I was using a yarn with a smaller gauge than called for in the pattern. In hindsight, I think that I could have decreased every 4 ridges, and then every 3 ridges, and back and forth until I used up all the necessary stitches. I do like that the decreases ended right at the cuff though. It just happens to be a rather roomy cuff…

And now on to the hood! I have started the hood, but think that I might rip it out and redo it as well. I made it pretty much according to the pattern, although I grafted 4 stitches on either side of the shoulder instead of picking them all up. (image below)

If this hood doesn’t work, I think that I am going to go back and decrease a little around the back of the neck to create a smaller neck opening, and work from there. As the pattern goes, the neck seems to be rather large, and the hood will be a little less shapely than some. I am not sure if this will be a problem for me or not. I already have a large-ish jacket with big sleeves, and maybe a big hood won’t be so bad. (For this particular jacket, I am going for warmth over fit anyways..)

But for now, I am going finish what I have started and see how it goes, and then if I don’t like it, then rip it. It always helps to see what a project might look like finished, to get ideas about how to adjust it. I guess that I am a big fan of knitting and re-knitting.