sweater update

Slowly but surely, I'm inching toward completion of my Philosopher's Wool sweater. Both sleeves are sewn on, and I picked up the stitches for the collar and knit that. At that point I decided to try it on. I was really doubtful that it would be big enough around. It is, in fact, snug, but I think opening it up into a cardigan, as planned, and adding a couple of inches on each side for the button bands will take care of that! Yeah!! I did notice, though, that the sleeves and body are a little bit shorter than I'd like them to be, so I'm taking a little detour in this process. I picked up 2 rows of stitches, snipped and picked the row in between, and separated one sleeve into upper and lower pieces. I then knit an additional pattern band onto the lower piece and grafted it back in place with the upper piece, so the sleeve is about 2" longer now.

I realized this also gives me an opportunity to easily fix my first-2-handed-fair-isle-band boo-boos when I do the other sleeve! I didn't mind the mistakes enough to fix them before, but since I need to take the sleeve apart to lengthen it anyway, I'll pick up one row of stitches above the mistakes and one row below that band, then rip out that diamond band and knit in the lengthening band and re-do the diamond band. Easy peasy now that I'm more comfortable with 2-handed knitting. Will then graft it back onto the sleeve, repeat lengthening process for body and be ready to knit the button band. Psyched!